Is  the 

Higher  Criticism 

Scholarly  ? 


Clearly  attested  facts  showing  that  the 

destructive  "assured  results  of 

modern   scholarship  " 

are  indefensible 


By 
Robert  Dick  Wilson,  Ph.D.,  D.D. 

Professor  of  Semitic  Philology  in 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary 


BSII&O 
.W75 


Philadelphia 
The  Sunday  School  Times  Company 


J^ 


IS  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM 
SCHOLARLY? 


Is  the 

Higher  Criticism 

Scholarly  ? 


Clearly  attested  facts  showing  that  the 

destructive  •*  assured  results  of 

modern   scholarship  " 

are  indefensible 


Robert  Dick  Wilson,  Ph.D.,  D.D. 

Professor  of  Semitic  Philology  in 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary 


Philadelphia 
The  Sunday  School  Times  Company 


^ 


Copyright,  1922,  by 
The  Sunday  School  Times  Company 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


FOREWORD 

'^A  S  A  man  is  interested  in  his  roses,  and  doesn*t 
^^j^  think  of  the  thorns,"  so  he  studied  language. 
That  was  Professor  Wilson's  answer  to  my 
query,  when  I  expressed  amazement  at  the  range  of 
his  linguistic  explorations,  covering  some  forty-five 
languages  and  dialects.  His  answer  helped  me  to 
understand. 

And  as  we  sat  by  the  fire  in  his  study  at  Princeton, 
with  the  signs  of  his  labors  all  around  us,  on  shelves, 
and  tables,  and  desk — yes,  and  on  the  floor,  I  came 
to  understand  still  better  the  stories  I  had  heard  of 
his  learning,  and  of  his  masterly  methods  in  the  de- 
fense of  the  Scriptures. 

When  he  was  a  little  chap,  four  years  old,  son  of 
a  leading  merchant  in  the  little  town  of  Indiana,  Pa., 
he  could  read.  He  began  to  go  to  school  at  five,  and 
at  eight  he  had  read,  among  other  books,  Rawlinson's 
"Ancient  Monarchies." 

That  merchant  father  was  a  man  of  sound  cul- 
ture and  good  sense.  He  was  president  of  the  Board 
of  Trade  of  his  county,  and  president  of  the  local 
school  board — with  ten  children  in  his  own  home. 

When  Robert  was  nine  years  old  he  and  a  brother 
were  taken  by  their  father  on  a  journey  to  Philadel- 

5 


phia.  One  of  the  exciting  and  memorable  experi- 
ences of  the  trip  was  the  visit  to  a  bookstore  on 
Chestnut  Street,  where  the  father  left  the  boys  for  a 
little  while,  so  that  they  might  select  a  number  of 
books,  of  their  own  choosing.  When  he  returned 
they  had  gathered  about  fifty  volumes,  including 
Prescott,  Robertson,  J.  S.  C.  Abbott,  and  similar 
standard  works, — examples  of  the  "light  reading" 
that  these  children  enjoyed. 

Robert  prepared  for  college  in  the  Indiana  public 
school,  and  was  ready  for  the  sophomore  class  at 
Princeton  when  he  was  fourteen  years  old.  How- 
ever, he  did  not  enter  his  class — the  class  of  1876 — 
until  he  was  at  the  advanced  age  of  seventeen,  for  as 
he  naively  and  rather  apologetically  remarked:  "I 
had  a  good  deal  of  headache  between  my  fourteenth 
and  twentieth  years,  and  then  typhoid.  After  that 
my  headache  disappeared.  I  really  couldn't  half  do 
my  work  before  that.'* 

In  college  young  Wilson  specialized  in  language, 
psychology,  and  mathematics.  In  such  Bible  courses 
as  he  then  studied  he  says  that  he  got  "a  very  low 
grade  of  90,  which  pulled  down  my  average." 

To  him  language  was  the  gateway  into  alluring 
fields  that  drew  him  strongly.  He  prepared  himself 
for  college  in  French,  German,  and  Greek,  learned 
Hebrew  by  himself,  and  took  a  hundred  dollar  prize 
in  Hebrew  when  he  entered  the  seminary. 

"But  how  did  you  ever  do  it?"  I  asked.  The  pro- 
fessor*s  eyes  twinkled,  and  he  smiled  at  my  surprise. 

"Well,  you  see,"  he  replied,  "I  used  my  spare  time. 
When  I  went  out  for  a  walk  I  would  take  a  gram- 

6 


mar  with  me,  and  when  I  sat  down  to  rest,  I  would 
take  out  the  book,  study  it  a  little,  and  learn  what 
I  could.  I  made  up  my  mind  that  I  wanted  to  read 
the  great  classics  in  the  originals,  so  I  just  learned 
the  languages  in  order  to  do  that. 

"I  would  read  a  grammar  through,  look  up  the  ex- 
amples, making  notes  as  I  went  along,  and  I  wouldn't 
pass  by  anything  until  I  could  explain  it.  I  never 
learned  long  lists  of  words,  but  I  would  read  a  page 
through,  recall  the  words  I  didn't  know,  and  then 
look  them  up.  I  read  anything  that  I  thought  would 
be  interesting  to  me  if  it  were  in  English.  I  got  so 
interested  in  the  story  that  I  was  unconscious  of  the 
labor, — as  a  man  is  interested  in  his  roses,  and 
doesn't  think  of  the  thorns.  So  I  learned  Greek, 
Latin,  French,  German,  Hebrew,  Italian,  Spanish, 
Portuguese,  Biblical  Aramaic,  Syriac,  Arabic,  and 
so  on." 

Now  Robert  Dick  Wilson  in  all  these  crowded 
years  was  not  clear  concerning  his  true  calling  in  life. 
Before  he  went  to  the  seminary,  he  and  a  brother  of 
his  gave  much  time  to  evangelism.  At  Indiana  they 
were  in  such  work  for  a  year  and  a  half,  and  with 
ample  evidence  of  God's  blessings  upon  their  labors 
in  great  numbers  of  souls  led  to  Christ.  That  work 
was  particularly  attractive  to  young  Wilson,  on  fire 
as  he  was,  and  is  to-day,  for  the  furtherance  of  the 
Gospel. 

But  his  seminary  studies  caused  him  to  feel  that 
there  was  a  great  need  for  a  type  of  Biblical  scholar- 
snip  that  was  not  so  subjective  as  much  of  the  teach- 
ing he  heard,  but  objective  and  thorough  in  dealing 

7 


with  facts  that  could  be  known  only  by  exhaustive 
research  over  the  whole  range  of  the  ancient  lan- 
guages related  to  the  Bible.  He  faced  the  question 
seriously, — should  he  go  on  in  the  highly  attractive 
and  necessary  work  of  preaching  in  which  he  had 
been  so  greatly  blessed,  or  was  God  calling  him  to 
years  of  toil  in  comparative  obscurity  and  seclusion, 
in  order  to  let  his  life  count  for  the  defense  of  the 
Scriptures  on  the  basis  of  linguistic  and  historical 
facts,  which  only  arduous  and  patient  toil  could 
reveal?  He  chose  under  God's  guiding  hand  the 
life  of  the  scholar,  and  thousands  have  thanked  God, 
and  other  thousands  will  yet  thank  him,  that  this 
servant  of  his  said,  "Here  am  I ;  send  me." 

What  Robert  Dick  Wilson  then  believed,  and  now 
believes  with  all  his  heart  is  this:  that  textual  and 
historical  Biblical  controversies  should  be  taken  out 
of  the  region  of  subjective  personal  opinion,  into  the 
region  of  objective,  clearly  attested  fact.  It  was  to 
this  task  that  he  set  himself,  and  no  labor  was  to  be 
too  long  or  too  tedious  or  exacting  to  enable  him  to 
reach  that  goal. 

He  could  not  at  that  time  learn  Babylonian  in 
America,  so  he  went  to  Heidelberg,  determined  to 
learn  every  language  that  would  enable  him  the  bet- 
ter to  understand  the  Scriptures,  and  to  make  his 
investigations  in  original  documents. 

So  to  Babylonian  he  added  Ethiopic,  Phoenician, 
all  the  Aramaic  dialects,  and  Egyptian,  Coptic,  Per- 
sian, and  Armenian.  He  studied  in  Berlin  with 
Schrader,  who  was  Delitzsch*s  teacher,  called  the 
father  of  Assyriology.    He  studied  his  Arabic  and 

8 


Syriac  under  Sachau,  and  Arabic  under  Jahn  and 
Dieterichi ;  Hebrew  under  Dillmann  and  Strack,  and 
Egyptian  under  Brugsch.  He  became  conversant 
with  some  twenty-six  languages  in  these  years  de- 
voted to  language  acquisition. 

For  Professor  Wilson  had  a  plan,  carefully 
worked  out  during  his  student  days  in  Germany, 
under  which  he  proposed  to  spend  fifteen  years  in 
language  study,  fifteen  years  in  Biblical  textual  study 
in  the  light  of  the  findings  of  his  studies  in  philology, 
and  then,  God  willing,  fifteen  years  of  writing  out 
his  findings,  so  that  others  might  share  them  with 
him.  And  now  it  is  our  privilege  in  this  booklet 
to  read,  in  terms  that  we  all  can  understand,  some 
of  the  gloriously  reassuring  facts  that  he  has  found 
in  his  long  pilgrimage  through  ancient  days. 

Just  a  single  glimpse  of  how  long  it  has  been 
startles  the  superficial  and  the  scholarly  student  as 
well,  when  either  learns  that  in  order  to  answer  a 
single  sentence  of  a  noted  destructive  critic,  Pro- 
fessor Wilson  read  all  the  extant  ancient  literature 
of  the  period  under  discussion  in  numerous  lan- 
guages, and  collated  no  less  than  one  hundred  thou- 
sand citations  from  that  literature  in  order  to  get  at 
the  basic  facts,  which  when  found  showed  that  the 
critic  was  wrong.  It  was  largely  a  case  of  superior 
scholarship — in  accordance  with  a  good  definition  of 
the  scholarly  temperament — "that  rare  combination 
of  profound  insight,  sustained  attention,  microscopic 
accuracy,  iron  tenacity,  and  disinterested  pursuit  of 
truth,  which  characterizes  the  great  scientific  dis- 
coverer or  the  great  historian." 

9 


Professor  Wilson's  productive  work  has  been  pre- 
sented hitherto  almost  entirely  to  his  students,  some 
two  thousand  of  whom  have  been  in  his  seminary 
classes  through  the  years;  in  scholarly  journals  of 
restricted  circulation ;  and  in  a  few  books,  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  of  which  is  his  "Studies  in  the 
Book  of  Daniel." 

"Professor,"  I  asked,  "what  do  you  try  to  do  for 
your  students?" 

Instantly  he  replied,  with  quiet  earnestness,  "I  try 
to  give  them  such  an  intelligent  faith  in  the  Old 
Testament  Scriptures  that  they  will  never  doubt 
them  as  long  as  they  live.  I  try  to  give  them  evi- 
dence, I  try  to  show  them  that  there  is  a  reasonable 
ground  for  belief  in  the  history  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. [He  has  not  specialized  on  the  New 
Testament.] 

"I've  seen  the  day,"  he  went  on,  "when  IVe  just 
trembled  at  undertaking  a  new  investigation,  but  I've 
gotten  over  that.  I  have  come  now  to  the  convic- 
tion that  no  inan  knows  enough  to  assail  the  truth- 
fulness of  the  Old  Testament.  Whenever  there  is 
sufficient  documentary  evidence  to  make  an  investi- 
gation, the  statements  of  the  Bible,  in  the  original 
texts,  have  stood  the  test." 

That  is  a  significant  statement  from  one  who  does 
not  have  to  trust  to  hearsay  in  matters  of  criticism, 
and  who  has  worked  for  so  many  years  in  devout 
self-denying  study  of  the  sources  and  the  text  of  the 
Old  Testament.  "When  a  man  says  to  me,  *I  don't 
believe  the  Old  Testament,' "  exclaimed  Dr.  Wilson, 
"he  makes  no  impression  upon  me.    When  he  points 

10 


out  something  there  that  he  doesn't  beheve,  he  makes 
no  impression  upon  me.  But  if  he  comes  to  me  and 
says,  'I've  got  the  evidence  here  to  show  that  the  Old 
Testament  is  wrong  at  this  or  that  point* — then  that's 
where  my  work  begins !  I'm  ready  for  him !"  And 
the  professor  laughed  in  his  hearty  way,  in  evident 
enjoyment  of  the  prospect  of  such  an  encounter. 

I  think  perhaps  one  reason  why  I  have  been  so 
stirred  by  many  personal  talks  with  this  stalwart 
scholar  is  the  habit  he  has  of  putting  proof  before 
you  as  he  goes,  and  not  standing  on  his  dignity  as 
though  no  one  had  a  right  to  ask  questions  of  him 
about  his  findings.  But  when  a  scholar  challenges 
him,  then  the  Professor  is  a  roused  lion, — no,  an 
aroused  attorney  for  the  defense,  massing  his  facts 
so  overwhelmingly,  proving  them,  driving  them 
home,  and  disclosing  the  weakness  of  his  opponent's 
case  so  convincingly,  that  I  should  think  the  attorney 
for  the  plaintiff  in  the  attack  on  the  Old  Testament 
would  wish  for  the  sake  of  his  reputation  that  he 
had  not  ventured  on  ground  where  his  own  ignorance 
would  be  so  manifest  to  the  court.  For  it  is  made 
very  evident  by  a  study  of  any  of  Professor  Wilson's 
keen  critiques  of  the  destructive  critics'  work  that 
much  of  the  material  so  often  called  by  the  critics 
"the  assured  results  of  modern  scholarship"  is  noth- 
ing more  than  the  quicksand  footsteps  of  a  really 
inexcusable,  downright  ignorance.  "Criticism,"  says 
Dr.  Wilson,  "is  not  a  matter  of  brains,  but  a  matter 
of  knowledge." 

But  let  Professor  Wilson  lay  before  you  his  find- 
ings.   He  is  conceraed  only  with  evidence,  and  it 

11 


will  gladden  your  heart  to  know  even  a  little  of  what 
he  has  found,  as  he  unfolds  some  of  his  experiences 
in  the  following  studies. 

Philip  E.  Howard, 
Publisher  of  The  Swiday  School  Times. 


12 


IS  THE  HIGHER  CRITICISM 
SCHOLARLY? 

THE  history  of  the  preparation  of  the  world 
for  the  Gospel  as  set  forth  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  simple  and  clear,  and  in  the  light  of 
the  New  Testament  eminently  reasonable.  In  fact, 
it  has  been  considered  so  reasonable,  so  harmonious 
with  what  was  to  have  been  expected,  that  Christ 
and  the  apostles  seem  never  to  have  doubted  its 
veracity,  and  the  Christian  Church  which  they 
founded  has  up  to  our  times  accepted  it  as  fully 
consonant  with  the  facts.  Within  the  last  two  cen- 
turies, however,  largely  as  a  result  of  the  Deistieal 
movement  in  England  and  of  the  application  to 
sacred  history  of  the  so-called  critical  method,  there 
has  arisen  a  widespread  doubt  of  the  truthfulness 
of  the  Old  Testament  records.  To  such  doubt  many 
have  refused  to  listen,  and  blessed  are  all  those  who 
have  no  doubts. 

Countering  With  Proof,  Defensive  and  Offensive 

But  there  are  many  whose  faith  in  the  veracity 
of  the  Scriptures  has  been  shaken ;  and  the  best,  and 
in  some  cases  the  only,  way  to  re-establish  their 
faith  is  to  show  them  that  the  charges  which  are 
brought  against  the  Bible  are  untrue  and  un- 
warranted. 

The  attempt  to  show  this  may  be  made  along  two 
13 


lines.  We  may  take  the  purely  defensive  line  and 
endeavor  to  show  that  the  general  and  particular 
attacks  upon  the  truthfulness  of  the  Old  Testament 
narratives  are  unsupported  by  facts.  Or,  we  may 
take  the  offensive  and  show  that  the  Old  Testament 
narratives  are  in  harmony  with  all  that  is  really 
known  of  the  history  of  the  world  in  the  times  de- 
scribed in  the  Old  Testament  records,  and  that  these 
records  themselves  contain  the  ineffaceable  evidence 
that  the  time  and  place  of  their  origin  agree  with 
the  facts  recorded.  The  best  method,  perhaps,  will 
be  to  make  an  offensive-defensive,  showing  not 
merely  that  the  attacks  are  futile,  but  that  the  events 
recorded  and  the  persons  and  things  described  are 
true  to  history, — that  is,  that  they  harmonize  in 
general  with  what  we  learn  from  the  contemporane- 
ous documents  of  other  nations. 

This  is  true  of  the  very  earliest  narratives  of  tlie 
Old  Testament.  Even  when  we  look  at  the  two 
great  events  occurring  before  the  time  of  Abraham 
— the  Creation  and  the  Flood — we  find  that  these 
events  are  the  same  that  are  emphasized  among  the 
Babylonians,  from  the  midst  of  whom  Abraham 
went  out.  For  it  is  certain,  that,  however  we  may 
account  for  the  difference  between  the  Babylonian 
and  Hebrew  accounts  of  the  Creation  and  of  the 
Deluge,  there  is  sufficient  resemblance  between  them 
to  point  to  a  common  origin  antedating  the  time  of 
Abraham^s  departure  from  Ur  of  the  Chaldees.^ 


^  See    King,    The   Seven    Tablets   of   Creation;   and   Jensen,    As- 
syrisch-Babytonische  Mythen  und  Epen. 

14 


The    Old    Testament    Derived    From    Written 
Sources  Based  on  Contemporary  Documents 

From  this  time  downward  there  is  no  good  reason 
for  doubting  that  the  BibHcal  narrative  is  derived 
from  written  sources  based  on  contemporaneous 
documents.  For,  first,  Abraham  came  out  of  that 
part  of  Babylonia  in  which  writing  had  been  in  use 
for  hundreds  of  years ;  and  he  Hved  during  the  time 
of  Hammurapi,  from  whose  reign  we  have  scores  of 
letters,  contracts,  and  other  records,  of  which  by  far 
the  most  important  is  the  so-called  code  of  laws 
which  bears  his  name.^  Besides,  writing  had  been 
in  existence  in  Egypt  already  for  two  thousand  years 
or  more,  so  that  we  can  well  believe  that  the  family 
of  Abraham,  traveling  from  Babylonia  to  Egypt  and 
at  last  settling  in  Palestine,  in  between  these  two 
great  literary  peoples,  had  also  formed  the  habit  of 
conducting  business  and  keeping  records  in  writing.^ 
Abraham  would  naturally  use  the  cuneiform  system 
of  writing,  since  this  is  known  to  have  existed  in 
Western  Asia  long  before  the  time  of  Hammurapi, 
and  the  Amarna  letters  show  clearly  that  Hebrew 
was  sometimes  written  in  that  script.* 

But  not  only  do  we  know  that  there  was  a  script 
in  which  to  write;  we  know,  also,  that  the  Hebrew 
language  was  used  in  Palestine  before  the  time  of 


'  See   King,    The   Letters   and   Inscriptions   of   Hammurabi;    and 
Harper,   The  Code  of  Hammurabi. 

•  See    especially    Schorr,    Urkunden    des    aJtbabylonischen    Zivil- 
und  Prosess-Rechts. 

*  See  Winckler,   Tgl- el- Amarna  Letters;  and   Knudtzon,  Die  El- 
Amarna-Tafeln. 

15 


Moses.  This  is  clear  not  merely  from  more  than 
a  hundred  common  words  embedded  in  the  Amarna 
letters  but  from  the  fact  that  the  names  of  the 
places  mentioned  in  them  are  largely  Hebrew.^  In 
the  geographical  lists  of  the  Egyptian  king,  Thothmes 
III,  and  of  other  kings  of  Egypt  we  find  more  than 
thirty  good  Hebrew  words  as  the  names  of  the 
cities  of  Palestine  and  Syria  that  they  conquered.'* 
From  these  facts  we  conclude  that  books  may  have 
been  written  in  Hebrew  at  that  early  period.  Fur- 
ther, we  see  that  the  sons  of  Abraham,  Isaac,  and 
Jacob  may  have  been  called  by  Hebrew  names,  as 
the  Biblical  record  assures  usJ 

Age-long  Correspondence  in  the  Chronology 
of  the  Bible  and  Profane  History 

Having  found,  then,  that  writing  and  the  Hebrew 
language  were  in  existence  long  before  the  time  of 
Moses,  we  turn  next  to  the  documents  of  the  Old 
Testament  which  purport  to  give  a  history,  more  or 
less  connected,  of  the  period  from  Abraham  (circa 
2000  B.  C.)  to  Darius  II  (circa  400  B.  C),  in  order 
to  find  out,  if  possible,  whether  the  general  scheme 
of  chronology  and  geography  presented  to  us  in  the 
Hebrew  records  corresponds  with  what  we  can  learn 
from  other  documents  of  the  same  period.  And 
here  we  find,  first,  that  the  nations  mentioned  in  the 
Scriptures  as  having  flourished  at  one  time  or  an- 


"  Knudtzon,  loc.  cit.,  p,  1545f. 

*  See  Max  Miiller,  Die  Paldstinaliste  Thutmoses  III. 
''  See    article    Was    Abraham    a    Myth?    in    "Bible    Student    and 
Teacher"  for  1905. 

16 


other  are  exactly  the  same  as  those  that  profane 
history  reveals  to  us.  Thus,  in  the  period  from 
Abraham  to  David  we  find  in  both  Biblical  and 
profane  sources  that  Egypt  is  recognized  as  already 
in  2000  B.  C.  a  great  and  predominant  power,  and 
that  she  continued  to  the  time  of  Solomon  to  be 
looked  upon  as  the  great  enemy  of  the  Israelites. 
In  the  same  period,  we  see  Elam  and  Babylon  oc- 
cupying the  first  place  in  the  far  East,  and  the 
Hittites,  Amorites,  Canaanites,  Sidonians,  Moabites, 
Edomites,  and  Damascus  in  the  intervening  section, 
the  "debatable  ground"  between  Egypt  and  Babylon. 

In  the  next  period,  from  1000  to  625  B.C.,  As- 
syria has  become  the  chief  power  among  the  nations 
in  the  neighborhood  of  Palestine,  with  Babylon  of 
only  secondary  importance.  Egypt  has  lost  the  first 
rank  and  is  at  times  subject  to  Cush  or  dominated 
by  Assyria.  Media  appears  on  the  scene,  but  as  a 
subject  of  Assyria.  Between  the  Euphrates  and 
Egypt,  the  Hittites  are  prominent  in  the  earlier  part, 
and  next  to  them  Hamath,  Damascus,  Tyre,  Am- 
mon,  Moab,  and  Edom.  Further,  the  distinction 
between  Samaria  and  Judah  is  clearly  recognized 
in  the  monuments. 

In  the  last  period,  from  625  to  400  B.  C,  Babylon 
has  become  the  leading  power  until  its  hegemony  is 
taken  over  by  Persia  under  Cyrus.  Egypt  as  a 
world  power  disappears  from  history  with  the  con- 
quests by  Nebuchadnezzar  and  Cambyses.  The  Hit- 
tites, Damascus,  Hamath,  Israel,  Judah,  and  all  the 
tribes  and  cities  between  Babylon  and  Egypt  have 
ceased  to  exist  as  independent  powers. 

17 


A  Foundation  for  Reliance 

Now,  into  this  framework  of  world  history,  the 
history  of  Israel  fits  exactly.  The  Bible  records  in 
succession  the  relations  of  Israel  with  Babylon, 
Elam,  Egypt,  Hittites,  Assyrians,  Babylonians,  and 
Persians ;  and  the  smaller  nations,  or  powers,  appear 
in  their  proper  relation  to  these  successively  great 
powers.  These  are  facts  that  cannot  be  denied  and 
they  afford  a  foundation  for  reliance  upon  the  state- 
ments of  the  Biblical  documents. 

Correct  Order  and  Character  of  the  Kings 
This  foundation  is  strengthened  when  we  observe 
that  the  kings  of  these  various  countries  whose 
names  are  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament  are  all 
named  in  the  order  and  in  the  synchronism  required 
by,  the  documents  of  the  kings  themselves.  Thus, 
Chedorlaomer,  possibly,  and  certainly  Hammurapi 
(the  Amraphel  of  Genesis  14)  and  Arioch  lived  at 
about  2000  B.  C. ;  Shishak,  Zerah,  So,  Tirhakeh, 
Necho,  and  Hophra,  kings  of  Cush  and  Egypt; 
Tiglath-Pileser,  Shalmaneser,  Sargon,  Sennacherib, 
and  Esarhaddon,  kings  of  Assyria;  Merodach- 
Baladan,  Nebuchadnezzar,  Evil-Merodach  and  Bel- 
shazzar,  kings  of  Babylon;  and  Cyrus,  Darius, 
Xerxes  and  Artaxerxes,  kings  of  Persia,  all  appear 
in  the  Scriptures  in  their  correct  order  as  attested 
by  their  own  records,  or  by  other  contemporaneous 
evidence.  The  same  is  true,  also,  of  the  kings  of 
Damascus,  Tyre,  and  Moab. 

Again,  we  find  that  the  Assyrian  documents  that 
mention  the  kings  of  Israel  and  Judah  name  them 

18 


in  the  same  order  in  which  they  appear  in  the 
chronicles  of  Israel  and  Judah.  And  not  only  this. 
We  find,  also,  that  the  statements  made  with  regard 
to  the  kings  of  all  these  countries  correspond  as 
closely  as  different  documents  ever  correspond  in 
reference  to  their  relative  power,  importance,  and 
characteristics  and  deeds.  Especially  noteworthy 
are  the  close  resemblances  in  this  respect  between 
the  accounts  of  Shishak,  Tiglath-Pileser,  Senna- 
cherib, Nebuchadnezzar,  and  Cyrus;  but  the  whole 
fabric  of  the  historic  structure  of  the  Old  Testament 
harmonizes  beautifully  in  general  outline  and  often 
in  detail  with  the  background  of  the  general  history 
of  the  world  as  revealed  in  the  documents  from  the 
nations  surrounding  Israel. 

A  Biblical  Phenomenon  Unequaled  in  the 
History  of  Literature 

Moreover,  an  extraordinary  confirmation  of  the 
careful  transmission  of  the  Hebrew  documents  from 
original  sources  lies  in  the  exact  manner  in  which 
the  names  of  the  kings  are  spelled.  The  twenty- 
four  names  of  kings  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  Babylon,  ct 
al,  contain  120  consonantal  letters,  of  which  all  are 
found  in  the  same  order  in  the  inscriptions  of  the 
kings  themselves  or  in  those  of  their  contemporaries. 
That  the  Hebrew  writers  should  have  transliterated 
these  names  with  such  accurateness  and  conformity 
to  philological  principles  is  a  wonderful  proof  of 
their  thorough  care  and  scholarship  and  of  their 
access   to   the   original   sources.     That   the   names 

19 


should  have  been  transmitted  to  us  through  so  many 
copyings  and  so  many  centuries  in  so  complete  a 
state  of  preservation  is  a  phenomenon  unequaled  in 
the  history  of  literature.  The  scribe  of  Assurbani- 
pal  in  transcribing  the  name  of  Psammetichus,  the 
contemporary  king  of  Egypt,  makes  the  mistake  of 
writing  a  t  for  the  p  at  the  beginning  and  an  /  for 
the  t  in  the  middle.^  Abulfeda,  the  author  of  the 
Arab  ante-Islamic  history,  gives  the  names  of  the 
kings  of  Persia  of  the  Achsemenid  line  as  "Kei- 
JKobad,  Kei-kawus,  Kei-Chosrew,  Kei-Lohrasp,  Kei- 
Bushtasf,  Kei-Ardeshir-Bahman  and  Chomani  his 
daughter,  and  Dara  the  First,  and  Dara  the  Second 
vi^ho  vi^as  killed  by  Alaskander,"  and  writes  the  name 
of  Nebuchadnezzar  as  Bactnosar.  In  the  list  of 
names  of  the  companions  of  Alexander  given  by  the 
Pseudo-Callisthenes,  nearly  every  name  is  changed 
so  as  to  be  unrecognizable ;  ^  and  the  same  is  true 
of  most  of  the  names  of  the  kings  of  Egypt  as  we 
have  them  preserved  in  the  lists  of  Manetho,  Herod- 
otus, and  Diodorus  Siculus,  and  of  the  kings  of  As- 
syria and  Babylonia  as  given  in  Africanus,  Castor, 
and  the  Canon  of  Ptolemy.^*^ 

The  Correctness  of  Hebrew  Authors  a 

Basis  for  Faith 

.     This  almost  universal  inaccuracy  and  unreliability 

8  See  Annals  of  AssurharJpaJ,  Col.  II,  114;  and  Streck's  Assur- 
banipal,   p.   715. 

•  See  President  Woolsey  in  the  Journal  of  the  American  Oriental 
Society.  Vol.  Ill,  pp.  359-440. 

^"  See  Cory,  Ancient  Fragments;  and  Muller,  Fragmenta  Histori- 
corum  Grcecorum;  and  article  on  "Darius  the  Mede,"  by  R.  D. 
Wilson,  in  Princeton  Theological  Review.  April,  1922. 

20 


of  the  Greek  and  Arab  historians  with  reference  to 
the  kings  of  Egypt,  Assyria,  and  Babylon  is  in  glar- 
ing contrast  with  the  exactness  and  trustworthiness 
of  the  Hebrew  Bible.  It  can  be  accounted  for,  hu- 
manly speaking,  only  on  the  grounds  that  the  authors 
of  the  Hebrew  records  were  contemporaries  of  the 
kings  they  mention,  or  had  access  to  original  docu- 
ments; and  secondly,  that  the  Hebrew  writers  were 
good  enough  scholars  to  transliterate  with  exactness  ; 
and  thirdly,  that  the  copyists  of  the  Hebrew  originals 
transcribed  with  conscientious  care  the  text  that  was 
before  them.  Having  given  such  care  to  the  names 
of  heathen  kings,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  they 
would  give  no  less  attention  to  what  these  kings 
said  and  did;  and  so  we  have  in  this  incontestable 
evidence  from  the  order,  times,  and  spelling  of  the 
names,  of  the  kings  an  indestructible  basis  upon 
which  to  rest  our  faith  in  the  reliability  of  the  his- 
tory recorded  in  the  books  of  the  Old  Testament 
Scriptures.  Doubt  about  some  of  the  minor  details 
can  never  invalidate  this  strong  foundation  of  facts 
upon  which  to  erect  the  enduring  structure  of  the 

history  of  Israel.  

Having  secured  a  framework  for  our  history,  let 
us  look  next  at  the  doorways  of  language  which  let 
us  inside  the  structure.  These  doorways  are  the 
passages  through  which  converse  with  the  outer 
world  was  carried  on  by  the  people  of  Israel.  On 
their  thresholds  will  be  seen  the  footprints  of  the 
nations  who  introduced  their  ideas  and  their  prod- 
ucts to  the  household  who  dwelt  within. 

21 


? 


Intruding  Foreign  Words  as  Date-Setters 

In  order  that  the  force  of  the  evidence  that  I  am 
about  to  produce  may  be  fully  appreciated,  let  me 
here  say  that  the  time  at  which  any  document  of 
length,  and  often  even  of  small  compass,  was  written 
can  generally  be  determined  by  the  character  of  its 
vocabulary,  and  especially  by  the  foreign  words 
which  are  embedded  in  it.  Take,  for  example,  the 
various  Aramaic  documents.  The  inscriptions  from 
Northern  Syria  having  been  written  in  Assyrian 
times  bear  evident  marks  of  Assyrian,  Phoenician, 
and  even  Hebrew  words.^^  The  Egyptian  papyri 
from  Persian  times  have  numerous  words  of  Egyp- 
tian, Babylonian,  and  Persian  origin,  as  have  also 
the  Aramaic  parts  of  Ezra  and  Daniel.^-  The  Na- 
batean  Aramaic  having  been  written  probably  by 
Arabs  is  strongly  marked,  especially  in  its  proper 
names,  by  Arab  words. ^^  The  Palmyrene,  Syriac, 
and  Rabbinical  Aramaic,  from  the  time  of  the 
Graeco-Roman  domination,  have  hundreds  of  terms 
introduced  from  Greek  and  Latin. ^*  Bar  Hebrseus 
and  other  writings  after  the  Mohammedan  conquest 
have  numerous  Arabic  expressions,  and  the  modern 


'■•  See  Lidzbarski,  Nordsemitische  Epigraphik;  and  Cooke,  North 
Semitic  Inscriptions. 

^'  See  Sayce-Cowley,  Papyri;  Sacbau,  Papyrus;  and  Lidzbarski, 
Epkemeris  for  1911. 

^'  See  Eutlng,  Sinaitische  htschriften  and  the  Corpus  Inscrip- 
tionum  Semiticarum,  Vol.  II. 

"See  Lidzbarski  and  Cooke  as  cited  in  Note  11;  Brockelmann, 
Lexicon  Syriacum;  and  Dalraan,  Aramdisch-neuhebrdisches  W'drter' 
bach. 


22 


Syriac  of  Ouroumiah  has  many  words  of  Persian, 
Kurdish,  and  Turkish  origin.^^ 

The  Ever-Changing  Influx  of  New  Words 
in  Hebrew  Scriptures 

Now,  if  the  BibHcal  history  be  true,  we  shall  ex- 
pect to  find  Babylonian  words  in  the  early  chapters 
of  Genesis  and  Egyptian  in  the  later;  and  so  on 
down,  an  ever-changing  influx  of  new  words  from 
the  languages  of  the  ever-changing  dominating 
powers.  And,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  this  is  exactly 
what  we  find.  The  accounts  of  the  Creation  and 
the  Flood  are  marked  by  Babylonian  words  and 
ideas.  The  record  of  Joseph  is  tinged  with  an 
Egyptian  coloring.  The  language  of  Solomon's  time 
has  Indian,  Assyrian,  and  probably  Hittite  words. 
From  his  time  to  the  end  of  the  Old  Testament, 
Assyrian  and  Babylonian  terms  are  often  found,  as 
in  Jeremiah,  Nahum,  Isaiah,  Kings,  and  other  books. 
Persian  words  come  in  first  with  the  conquest  of 
Babylon  by  Cyrus  and  are  frequent  in  Daniel,  Ezra, 
Nehemiah,  Chronicles,  and  Esther,  and,  in  the  case 
of  proper  names,  one  at  least  occurs  in  both  Haggai 
and  Zechariah.  No  Greek  words  are  to  be  found 
in  the  Hebrew  of  the  Old  Testament,  except  Javan 
and  possibly  one  or  two  other  terms.  That  Aramaic 
words  may  have  been  in  Hebrew  documents  at  any 
time  from  Moses  to  Ezra  is  shown  by  the  fact  that 
two  or  more  words  and  phrases  found  elsewhere 


"  See  Brockelraann,   Lexicon  Syriacum;  and   MacLean,   Diction- 
ary of  Vernacular  Syriac. 

23 


only  in  Aramaic  occur  already  in  the  Tel-el- Amarna 
letters,  and  one  in  a  letter  to  the  king  of  Egypt  from 
Abd-Hiba  of  Jerusalem.^® 

It  may  be  known  to  the  reader  that  one  verse  in 
Jeremiah  and  about  half  of  the  books  of  Ezra  and 
Daniel  are  written  in  Aramaic.  This  is  what  we 
might  have  expected  at  a  time  when,  as  the  Egyp- 
tian papyri"  and  the  Babylonian  indorsements^* 
show,  the  Aramaic  language  had  become  the  common 
language  of  Western  Asia  and  in  particular  of  the 
Jews,  at  least  in  all  matters  of  business  and  com- 
merce. That  the  Hebrew  parts  of  Daniel  and  Ezra 
should  have  a  large  number  of  Aramaic  words 
would,  therefore,  be  expected ;  and,  also,  they  would 
naturally  be  found  in  Chronicles  and  Nehemiah  and 
other  documents  coming  from  the  latter  part  of  the 
sixth  century  (when  Aramaic  was  the  lingua  franca 
of  the  Persian  empire)  and  in  other  works  down  to 
the  latest  composition  of  the  Old  Testament.  In 
later  Hebrew  this  process  of  absorbing  foreign 
words  may  be  illustrated  by  numerous  examples. 
Thus  the  tract  Yoma,  written  about  A.  D.  200,  has 
about  twenty  Greek  words  in  it,  and  Pesahim,  about 
fourteen,  while  hundreds  of  them  are  found  in  Dal- 
man's  dictionary  of  New  Hebrew.  Many  terms  of 
Latin  origin  also  appear  in  the  Hebrew  literature  of 
Roman  times. 


"  See  Winckler  and  Knudtzon  as  cited  in  Note  4. 
"  See   Sayce-Cowley,  Papyri;  and   Sachau,  Papyrus. 
"  See   Article   by  A.   T.   Clay   in    The    W.   R.   Harper  Memorial 
Volume. 

24 


No  Whit  Different  From  Our  Own  Language 
To-day 

We  thus  see  that  the  Hebrew,  just  Hke  the  Ara- 
maic, has  embedded  in  it  traces  of  the  nations  that 
influenced  its  history  from  2000  B.  C.  to  A.  D.  1500, 
or  indeed  to  the  present  time.  The  reader  will  com- 
pare this  with  the  marks  which  have  been  left  upon 
our  American  nomenclature  by  the  different  nations 
that  have  influenced  its  history.  The  native  Indian 
appears  in  the  names  Massachusetts,  Connecticut, 
Allegheny,  Ohio,  Mexico,  Yucatan,  and  countless 
other  terms.  The  Spanish  appears  in  Florida,  San 
Anselmo,  Los  Angeles,  Vera  Cruz,  New  Granada, 
and  numerous  appellations  of  mountains,  rivers,  and 
cities;  the  French,  in  Montreal,  Detroit,  Vincennes, 
Duquesne,  Louisiana,  St.  Louis,  and  New  Orleans; 
the  Dutch,  in  Hackensack,  Schenectady,  Schuyler; 
the  German,  in  Germantown,  and  Snyder  County 
(Pennsylvania).  Some  of  these  languages  have 
contributed,  also,  various  words  of  common  use  such 
as  moccasin,  succotash,  potato,  maize,  tomato,  toma- 
hawk, prairie,  sauerkraut,  broncho,  and  corral. 

These  languages  all  have  left  their  mark,  but  the 
great  directing,  predominating,  language  and  nation 
were  the  English,  as  is  shown  not  merely  in  our 
literature  and  laws,  but  also  in  such  names  as  New 
Hampshire,  Boston,  New  York,  Albany,  New  Jer- 
sey, Pennsylvania,  Pittsburgh,  and  the  names  of 
most  of  our  cities,  counties,  and  statesmen.  But 
that  the  English  received  their  laws  largely  from  the 
Romans  and  the  Normans  is  evident  in  any  law 

25 


book  or  court  room ;  that  they  received  their  religion 
from  the  Hebrews  through  the  Greek  and  Latin 
churches  is  evident  from  the  v^rords  wt  use  every 
day  such  as  amen,  hallelujah,  priest,  baptism,  cathe- 
dral, bishop,  chant,  cross,  resurrection,  glory,  and 
countless  others. 

Critics  Undervalue  the  Totality  of  the  Evidence 

Thus,  the  vicissitudes  of  the  life  of  the  English 
people  for  the  last  fifteen  hundred  years  can  be 
traced  in  the  foreign  vi^ords  that  have  been  taken 
over  into  its  literature  during  that  period.  So  also 
with  the  Hebrew  people  for  the  last  four  thousand 
years,  and  in  the  first  part  of  sixteen  hundred  years 
no  less  than  since  that  time.  And  in  the  study  of 
the  Hebrew  literature  in  the  light  of  the  foreign 
elements  that  are  embedded  in  it,  we  find  that  the 
truthfulness  of  the  history  is  incidentally  but  con- 
vincingly confirmed.  ^'In  each  stage  of  the  literature 
the  foreign  words  in  the  documents  are  found  to 
belong  to  the  language  of  the  peoples  that  the  Scrip- 
tures and  the  records  of  the  nations  surrounding 
Israel  unite  in  declaring  to  have  influenced  and  af- 
fected the  Israelites  at  that  time.  'The  critics  of  the 
Old  Testament  have  never  given  sufficient  weight  to 
the  totality  of  this  evidence. 

That  the  presence  of  Babylonian  terms  in  the  first 
chapter  of  Genesis  points  to  a  time  when  Babylonian 
influence  was  predominant,  no  one  will  dispute;  but 
the  same  influence  is  manifest  in  the  second  chapter 
and  also  in  Daniel.  This  influence  can  easily  be 
accounted  for  in  all  three  instances  on  the  supposi- 

26 


tion  that  the  contents  of  Genesis  1  and  2  were 
brought  by  Abraham  from  Babylon  and  that  the 
book  of  Daniel  was  written  at  Babylon  in  the  sixth 
century  B.  C.  While  it  might  be  accounted  for  in 
Genesis  1  if  it  were  composed  at  Babylon  during 
or  after  the  exile,  how  can  it  have  influenced  Genesis 
2,  if,  as  the  critics  assert,  it  were  written  somewhere 
between  800  and  750  B.C.?  How,  also,  can  we 
account  for  the  Babylonian  influence  in  Daniel  if, 
as  the  same  critics  assure  us,  it  were  written  in 
Palestine  in  164  B.  C.  ? 

Why  Are  Persian  Words  Missing  in  Critic- 
Belated  Bible  Books? 

So  of  the  Persian  words.  They  are  found  espe- 
cially in  Chronicles,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  Esther,  and 
Daniel,  all  ostensibly  from  the  Persian  period  of 
world  domination.  "^  According  to  analogy,  this  Per- 
sian domination  accounts  for  their  presence  in  these 
books.  But  how  about  their  absence  from  Jonah, 
Joel,  Job,  the  Psalms,  the  Song  of  Songs,  the  so- 
called  Priest-Code  of  the  Pentateuch  and  other  writ- 
ings which  the  critics  place  in  the  Persian  period? 
Why  especially  should  the  Priest-Code  have  no  Per- 
sian, and  probably  no  Aramaic,  words,  if  it  were 
written  between  500  and  300  B.  C,  in  the  very  age 
and,  as  some  afifirm,  by  the  very  author  of  the  book 
of  Ezra?  And  why  should  the  only  demonstrably 
Babylonian  words  in  this  part  of  the  Pentateuch  be 
found  in  the  accounts  of  the  Creation  and  the  Flood, 
which  may  so  well  have  come  with  Abraham  from 
Ur  of  the  Chaldees?    And  how  could  the  word  for 

27 


y 


"kind'*  (min),  an  Egyptian  word,  have  come  to  be 
used  by  the  man  who  is  supposed  to  have  written 
this  latest  part  of  the  Pentateuch  in  Babylon  in  the 
fifth  century  B.C.?  y^ 

These  and  other  similar  questions  that  ought  to 
be  asked  we  may  leave  to  the  critics  of  the  Old 
Testament  to  attempt  to  answer.  They  dare  not 
deny  the  facts  without  laying  themselves  open  to 
the  charge  of  ignorance.  They  dare  not  ignore  them 
without  submitting  to  the  charge  of  wilful  suppres- 
sion of  the  facts  in  evidence. 

But  some  one  will  say:  How  about  the  Greek 
words  in  Daniel?  No  one  claims  that  there  are  any 
Greek  words  in  the  Hebrew  of  Daniel.  In  the  Ara- 
maic parts  of  Daniel  there  are  three  words,  all 
names  of  musical  instruments,  which  are  alleged, 
not  proved,  to  be  Greek.  It  is  more  likely  than  not, 
I  think,  that  they  are  of  Greek  origin,  though  no 
one  of  them  is  exactly  transliterated.  Assuming, 
however,  that  they  are  Greek,  and  waiving  the  ques- 
tion as  to  whether  this  part  of  the  book  was  origi- 
nally written  in  Hebrew,  or  Babylonian,  and  after- 
wards translated  into  Aramaic,  there  is  no  good 
reason  for  supposing  that  Greek  musical  instru- 
ments, retaining  their  original  names  though  in  a 
somewhat  perverted  form,  may  not  have  been  used 
at  the  court  of  Nebuchadnezzar. 

How  Greek  Words  May  Have  Crept  Into  Daniel 

^  It  is  known  for  a  certainty  that  from  the  earliest 
times  the  kings  and  peoples  of  Babylon  and  Nineveh 
delighted  in  music.    Now,  the  Greeks,  according  to 

28 


all  their  traditions  and  habits,  both  in  war  and  wor- 
ship, had  practised  music  at  all  periods  of  their 
history  and  far  excelled  all  ancient  peoples  in  their 
attainments  in  the  art  of  music.  We  all  know  how 
readily  musical  instruments  and  their  native  names 
travel  from  land  to  land.  We  might  instance  the 
ukelele,  the  guitar,  the  organ,  and  the  trumpet.  The 
Greeks  themselves  imported  many  foreign  musical 
instruments  which  retained  their  foreign  names. 
From  at  least  1000  B.  C.  there  was  an  active  com- 
merce between  the  Greeks  and  the  Semites.  Cyprus 
and  Cilicia  were  subdued  by  the  Assyrian  kings; 
and  Sennacherib  about  700  B.  C.  conquered  a  Greek 
fleet  and  carried  many  prisoners  captive  to  Nineveh. 
Assurbanipal  received  the  homage  of  Gyges,  king 
of  Lydia,  the  neighbor  and  overlord  of  many  Greek 
cities  in  Asia  Minor. 

Greeks  had  been  settled  in  Egypt  since  long  be- 
fore the  time  of  Assurbanipal  and  Nebuchadnezzar 
and  served  as  mercenaries  in  the  armies  of  the 
Egyptian  kings  who  were  subdued  by  the  great 
kings  of  Nineveh  and  Babylon,  and  also  in  the  army 
of  Nebuchadnezzar  himself.  Thousands,  perhaps, 
tens  of  thousands,  of  captive  Greek  soldiers  would, 
according  to  the  custom  of  those  days,  be  settled  in 
the  cities  of  the  Euphrates  and  Tigris  valleys.  And 
these  valleys  were  filled  with  people  who  spoke 
Aramaic.  The  Greeks  would  mingle  with  them  and, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  Jews  at  Babylon,  the  natives 
would  ask  of  them  a  song;  and  they  would  sing 
their  strange  songs  to  the  accompaniment  of  their 
native  instruments.     This  is  one  way  in  which  the 

29 


instruments  and  their  names  could  get  into  Aramaic 
long  before  the  time  when  the  Aramaic  of  Daniel 
was  written.  Another  was  through  the  slaves,  both 
men  and  girls,  who  would  certainly  be  brought  from 
all  lands  to  minister  to  the  pleasures  of  the  luxurious 


court  of  the  Chaldean  king. 


Why  Daniel  May  Have  Used  Persian  Words 

That  Daniel  may  have  used  the  so-called  Persian 
Words  in  a  document  dating  from  the  latter  part  of 
the  sixth  century  B.  C.  is  manifest  when  we  remem- 
ber that  the  children  of  Israel  from  the  kingdom  of 
Samaria  had  been  captive  among  the  Medes  for  two 
hundred  years  before  the  time  of  the  conquest  of 
Babylon  by  Cyrus,  and  that  the  Jews  had  been 
carried  to  the  banks  of  the  Chebar  and  other  locali- 
ties where  Aramaic  was  spoken  nearly  two  genera- 
tions before  Daniel  died.  The  Medes  spoke  a  dia- 
lect of  the  Persian,  and,  having  overthrown  Nineveh 
in  606  B.  C,  had  ruled  over  large  numbers  of  Ara- 
maean tribes  on  the  upper  Tigris  ever  since  that 
time.  Such  Medo-Persian  terms  as  are  found  in 
Daniel,  being  mostly  official  titles  like  governor  and 
names  of  persons,  are  the  ones  which  would  most 
readily  be  adopted  by  the  subject  nations,  including 
the  Aramaeans  and  Jews.  That  the  words  satrap 
and  Xerxes  were  taken  directly  from  the  Medo- 
Persian  and  not  from  the  Greek  is  shown  by  the 
fact  that  the  Hebrew  and  Aramaic  spelling  of  these 
names  in  Daniel  is  exactly  the  equivalent  of  that  in 
the  original  language  and  not  such  as  it  must  have 

30 


been  if  these  words  had  been  taken  over  indirectly 
through  the  Greek  historians. 

Before  leaving  this  subject  of  language,  attention 
must  be  called  to  two  matters  that  the  critics  have 
made  of  supreme  importance  in  their  attempts  to 
settle  the  dates  of  the  documents  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. The  first  matter  is  that  of  the  value,  as 
evidence  of  date  of  the  occurrence,  of  Aramaic 
words  in  a  Hebrew  document ;  and  the  second  is  the 
value,  as  evidence  of  date,  of  Hebrew  words  that 
occur  but  once,  or  at  most  a  few  times,  in  the  Old 
Testament  and  that  reoccur  in  the  Hebrew  of  the 
Talmud. 

Hebraisms  in  Aramaic,  Not  Aramaisms 
in  Hebrew 

As  to  the  first  of  these,  the  so-called  Aramaisms, 
the  number  has  been  grossly  exaggerated.  Many 
of  the  words  and  roots  formerly  called  Aramaisms 
have  been  found  in  Babylonian  records  as  early  as 
Abraham.  As  to  the  remainder,  many  of  them 
occur  in  the  Old  Testament  but  once.  In  view  of 
the  fact  that  there  are  about  1500  words  used  but 
once  in  the  Old  Testament,  it  is  impossible  to  select 
some  of  these  and  call  them  Aramaisms,  simply 
because  they  are  used  in  Aramaic  also.  Hundreds 
of  words  in  both  Aramaic  and  Hebrew,  and  also 
in  Babylonian  and  Arabic,  have  the  same  meaning 
irrespective  of  the  number  of  times  or  the  docu- 
ments in  which  they  occur.  According  to  the  laws 
of  consonantal  change  existing  among  the  Semitic 

31 


languages,  not  more  than  five  or  six  Aramaic  roots 
can  be  shown  to  have  been  adopted  by  the  Hebrew 
from  the  Aramaic.  These  roots  are  found  in  what 
the  critics  class  as  early  documents  as  well  as  in  the 
later.  Besides,  a  large  proportion  of  the  words 
designated  as  Aramaisms  do  not  occur  in  any  Ara- 

l/  maic  dialect  except  those  that  were  spoken  by  Jews. 
In  all  such  cases  the  probability  is  that  instead  of 
the  word's  being  an  Aramaism  in  Hebrew,  it  is  a 
Hebraism  in  Aramaic.  For  the  Hebrew  documents 
in  all  such  cases  antedate  the  Aramaic  by  hundreds 
of  years;  and  it  is  evident  that  the  earlier  cannot 
have  been  derived  from  the  later. 

Again,  the  critics  find  words  which  they  call  Ara- 
maisms not  merely  in  the  books  which  they  assert 
to  be  late,  but  in  those  that,  according  to  their  own 
dating,  are  the  earliest.  In  this  case,  without  any 
evidence  except  their  own  theory  of  how  it  ought 
to  be,  they  charge  that  the  original  text  has  been 
changed  and  the  Aramaic  word  inserted.  Such  pro- 
cedure is  contrary  to  all  the  laws  of  evidence,  fair- 
ness, and  common  sense.  For  there  is  no  reason 
why  the  early  documents  of  the  Hebrews  should  not 
have  contained  linguistic  marks  of  Aramaic  influ- 

^  ence.  According  to  Genesis  31,  Laban  spoke  Ara- 
maic. David  conquered  Damascus  and  other  cities 
where  Aramaic  was  spoken  and  the  Israelites  have 
certainly  been  in  continuous  contact  with  Aramaean 
tribes  from  that  time  to  the  present.  Sporadic  cases 
of  the  use  of  Aramaic  words  would,  therefore,  prove 
nothing  as  to  the  date  of  a  Hebrew  document. 


A  Theory  That  Would  Make  All  Docu- 
ments Late 
In  the  second  place,  critics  who  are  attempting 
to  prove  the  late  date  of  a  certain  document  are 
wont  to  cite  the  words  in  that  document  which 
occur  nowhere  else,  except  possibly  in  another  work 
claimed  as  being  late,  and  in  the  Hebrew  of  the 
Talmud.  Such  evidence  is  worthy  of  being  collected 
in  order  to  show  the  peculiarities  of  an  author,  but 
it  does  not  necessarily  have  anything  to  do  with 
proving  the  date.  For  there  are  three  thousand 
words  in  the  Old  Testament  that  occur  five  times 
only  or  under,  and  fifteen  hundred  that  occur  but 
once.  Besides,  such  words  occurring  elsewhere  in 
the  Talmud  are  found  in  every  book  of  the  Old 
Testament  and  in  almost  every  chapter.  If  such 
words  were  proof  of  the  lateness  of  a  document,  all 
documents  would  be  late;  a  conclusion  so  absurd 
as  to  be  held  by  nobody. 

Hebrew  Literary  Forms  Duplicated  in  Babylon 
and  Egypt 
From  the  language  of  the  Old  Testament  we 
naturally  turn  next  to  the  literature,  in  order  to  see 
if  the  literary  forms  in  which  the  documents  are 
written  are  such  as  we  would  expect  to  find  in  ex- 
istence when  the  documents  lay  claim  to  have  been 
written.  Our  only  evidence  here  must  be  derived 
from  comparative  literature  and  contemporary  his- 
tory.^^    Turning,  then,  to  the  vast  body  of  the  litera- 

'»  See  further  on  this  subject  in  article  by  R.  D.  Wilson  on 
"Scientific  Biblical  Criticism,"  in  The  Princeton  Theological  Review 
for   1919. 

33 


tures  of  the  Babylonians  and  Egyptians  we  find  that 
in  one,  or  both,  of  them  is  to  be  found  every  type 
of  literary  form  that  is  met  with  in  the  literature  of 
the  Old  Testament;  except  perhaps  the  discourses 
of  the  prophets.  As  no  serious  dispute  of  the  date, 
or  authorship,  of  the  works  of  the  prophets  is  made 
on  the  ground  of  mere  literary  form,  the  general 
statement  will  stand  unimpeached;  for  poetry,  his- 
tory, laws,  and  biographies  are  all  amply  duplicated 
in  form  and  style  in  the  many  productions  of  the 
great  nations  that  surrounded  Israel. 

The  Same  True  of  Legal  Forms 

With  regard  to  the  laws  it  may  be  said  that,  not 
merely  in  the  form  in  which  the  individual  laws  are 
stated,  but  also  in  the  manner  in  which  they  are 
collected  together  in  a  kind  of  code,  there  was  a 
pattern  for  the  Israelites  already  existing  at  least 
from  the  time  of  Hammurapi,  a  contemporary  of 
Abraham.  This  code  of  Hammurapi,  it  is  true,  deals 
almost  entirely  with  civil  and  criminal  laws  such  as 
we  find  in  parts  of  Deuteronomy.  But  the  plan  of 
the  tabernacle  in  Exodus  25-29  may  be  likened  to 
the  plans  of  the  Babylonian  temples  which  were 
placed  in  their  foundation  stones,  to  which  Nebu- 
chadnezzar and  Nabunaid  so  often  refer.  Laws 
similar  to  those  concerning  leprosy  and  other  dis- 
eases have  also  come  down  from  the  old  Sumerians. 
It  is  almost  certain,  also,  that  the  elaborate  cere- 
monies of  the  Egyptian  and  Babylonian  temples 
must  have  been  regulated  by  written  laws,  though 

34 


thus  far  we  have  discovered  no  complete  code  treat- 
ing of  such  matters. 

That  Moses  with  his  education  in  all  the  wisdom 
of  the  Egyptians  at  1500  B.  C.  might  have  produced 
the  laws  of  the  Pentateuch  under  the  divine  guid- 
ance seems  beyond  dispute.  Lycurgus,  Mohammed, 
Charlemagne,  Peter  the  Great,  and  Napoleon  have 
performed  similar  feats  without  any  special  divine 
help.  It  does  not  follow  that  systems  of  law  and 
constitutions  were  not  written,  or  inaugurated,  be- 
cause they  were  never  carried  out  nor  permanently 
established.  Theodoric  and  Alfred  the  Great  and 
even  Charlemagne  organized  governments  which 
scarcely  survived  their  demise.  The  critics  are  in 
the  habit  of  stressing  the  fact  that  so  little  mention 
of  the  law  is  made  in  the  period  before  Hezekiah, 
or  even  Josiah,  and  assert  that  the  law  of  the  Priest- 
code  was  not  fully  established  before  Ezra. 

An  Argument  From  Silence  Which  Proves 
Nothing 

This  is  an  argument  from  silence  which  proves 
nothing  absolutely.  There  is  a  history  of  the  United 
States  called  Scribner's  by  William  Cullen  Bryant 
and  others.  It  has  53  pages,  double  column,  of 
Index.  The  word  Presbyterian  does  not  occur  in 
this  Index;  the  word  Christian  only  in  the  phrase, 
Christian  Commission;  the  word  church  only  twice. 
And  yet,  this  is  a  history  of  a  republic  founded  by 
Christians,  observing  the  Sabbath,  devoted  to  for- 
eign missions,  and  full  of  Christian  churches  and 
activities.     Thirty-five  hundred   pages   quarto  and 

35 


no  mention  of  Thanksgiving  Day,  nor  of  the  days 
of  fasting  and  prayer  during  the  Civil  War,  nor  of 
the  Bible  except  in  the  relation  of  the  Bible  Society 
to  slavery ! 
j  Nor  does  it  prove  that  the  law  did  not  exist,  to 
show  that  it  was  not  completely  observed,  or  that 
things  forbidden  in  it  were  done.  Does  the  crime 
wave  that  has  been  sweeping  the  world  since  the 
close  of  the  war  prove  that  the  Gospel  does  not 
exist?  In  one  week  of  December,  1920,  the  front 
page  of  one  of  our  great  New  York  dailies  had 
scarcely  space  for  anything  except  reports  of  mur- 
ders, burglaries,  and  other  crimes.  Are  the  Ten 
Commandments  unknown  in  New  York  City? 

But  the  critics  assert  that  a  long  period  of  de- 
velopment was  necessary  before  such  a  system  of 
laws  could  have  been  formulated,  accepted,  and  en- 
forced. I  agree  readily  to  this ;  but  I  claim  that  all 
the  development  necessary  for  the  formulation  may 
have  taken  place  before  the  time  of  Moses  and  that 
its  hearty  acceptance  by  the  people  and  its  enforce- 
ment depended  upon  moral  rather  than  intellectual 
conditions.  As  far  as  intellectual  requirements  are 
concerned,  there  is  nothing  in  the  law  that  might 
not  have  been  written  either  in  Babylon  or  Egypt  a 
thousand  years  before  Moses.  Then  as  now  it  was 
spiritual  power  and  moral  inclination  that  was 
wanted  rather  than  intellectual  perception  in  order 
to  do  the  right  and  abhor  the  wrong.  In  each  suc- 
cessive generation  of  Israelitish  men  each  individual 
of  the  nation  had  to  be  converted  and  to  submit  his 
soul  and  conduct  to  the  teachings  of  the  divine  law. 


The  ancient  Jewish  church  had  its  ups  and  downs, 
its  times  of  strenuous  faith  and  of  declension  and 
decay,  just  as  the  Christian  church  has  had. 

Ample  Time  for  Revision  of  Laws 

It  is  claimed  by  the  critics  that  signs  of  progress, 
or  change,  are  to  be  observed  in  some  of  the  laws 
as  given  in  Exodus  20-24,  Leviticus,  and  Deuter- 
onomy. This  may  be  admitted.  It  is,  however,  a 
sufficient  answer  to  this  claim  that  in  the  forty  years 
from  the  arrival  at  Sinai  to  the  final  address  of 
Moses  at  Shittim,  there  was  plenty  of  time  for 
revision  and  adaptation  of  these  laws  to  suit  all 
probable  variety  of  circumstances  awaiting  the  peo- 
ple of  God.  Consider  the  changes  in  forty  years  in 
the  fish  laws  of  Pennsylvania,  or  in  the  tariff  or 
railroad  legislation  of  the  United  States!  Besides, 
many  of  these  apparently  variant  legislations  with 
regard  to  the  same  thing  are,  as  Mr.  Wiener  has  so 
clearly  shown  in  his  "Studies  in  Biblical  Law," 
really  laws  affecting  different  relations  of  the  same 
thing.  Some,  also,  like  the  Income  Tax  Laws  upon 
our  yearly  declaration  sheet,  are  general  laws  for 
the  whole  people;  while  others,  like  the  detailed 
statements  of  the  Income  Tax  Law  that  are  meant 
to  guide  the  tax  officials,  are  meant  for  the  priests 
and  Levites  who  officiated  at  the  sanctuary. 

That  there  should  be  repetitions  of  the  laws  af- 
fecting the  Sabbath,  festivals,  idolatry,  and  so  forth, 
does  not  argue  against  unity  of  authorship.  The 
central  facts  of  a  new  system  are  frequently  empha- 
sized by  such  repetition,  as  is  manifest  in  almost 


every  chapter  of  the  Koran,  and  in  almost  every 
epistle  of  the  apostle  Paul.  Why  they  thus  repeat 
is  not  always  clear  to  us;  but  it  is  to  be  supposed 
that  it  was  clear  to  the  authors  of  the  repetitions. 
That  is  a  question  of  motives  and  not  of  text  or 
evidence.  What  the  Peace  Treaty  says  is  evident; 
why  the  treaty-makers  said  thus  and  so  is  not  al- 
ways apparent,  and  cannot  be  produced  in  evidence. 

Were  the  "Redactors"  Slipshod  Editors? 

That  there  should  be  apparent  contradictions 
among  so  many  laws  was  inevitable.  Some  of  these 
are  doubtless  due  to  errors  of  transmission,  espe* 
cially  if,  as  seems  probable,  the  original  was  written 
in  cuneiform  and  afterwards  transferred  to  an 
alphabetic  system  of  writing.  Some  of  them  appear 
contradictory,  but  really  relate  to  different  persons 
or  circumstances.  Certainly,  if  they  were  as  con- 
tradictory and  irreconcilable  as  the  critics  suppose, 
we  have  a  right  to  express  our  astonishment  that 
such  contradictions  were  not  removed  by  one  or 
another  of  those  numerous  and  canny  redactors, 
editors,  and  diaskcuasts  (revisers),  of  unknown  but 
blessed  memory,  whom  the  critics  allege  and  assume 
to  have  labored  for  centuries  upon  the  elaboration  of 
these  laws.  Surely,  these  alleged  contradictions 
cannot  have  escaped  their  notice.  Surely,  they  can- 
not have  seemed  incongruous  to  the  priests  of  the 
second  temple  and  to  the  Scribes  and  Pharisees  who 
put  them  into  execution.  Surely,  if  real  contradic- 
tions exist  in  the  laws  it  is  more  likely  that  they  were 
not  in  the  ancient  documents  and  that  they  arose  in 

38 


the  process  of  transmission  through  the  vicissitudes 
of  many  centuries,  than  that  they  should  have  been 
inserted  in  the  time  of  Jeremiah,  or  of  Ezra,  that 
ready  scribe  in  the  Law  of  Moses. 

Will  Objectors  Please  Answer  a  Few  Questions? 

Before  leaving  the  matter  of  the  law,  it  may  be 
well  to  propose  for  the  consideration  of  the  ob- 
jectors to  the  Biblical  account  of  the  origin  of  the 
laws  of  Moses  a  few  questions  that,  it  seems  to  me, 
require  an  answer  before  we  can  accept  their  theory 
of  its  origin,  unsupported  as  it  is  by  any  direct 
evidence. 

First,  if  Exodus  20-24  and  Deuteronomy  were 
written  in  the  period  of  the  kingdoms  of  Israel  and 
Judah,  how  can  we  account  for  the  fact  that  the 
king  is  referred  to  but  once  (Deuteronomy  16),  and 
that  in  a  passage  difficult  to  read  and  explain  and 
claiming  to  be  anticipatory?  And  why  should  this 
passage  make  no  reference  to  the  house  of  David, 
and  place  its  emphasis  on  a  warning  against  a  return 
to  Eg)^pt? 

Second,  why  should  the  law  never  mention  Zion, 
or  Jerusalem,  as  the  place  where  men  ought  to  wor- 
ship, if  these  laws  were  written  hundreds  of  years 
after  the  temple  had  been  built? 

Third,  why  should  the  temple  itself  receive  no 
consideration,  but  be  set  aside  for  a  "mythical" 
tabernacle  whose  plan  to  the  minutest  particular  has 
been  elaborated  with  so  much  care?  And  why,  if 
this  plan  were  devised  at  Babylon  in  the  fifth  cen- 
tury B.  C,  should  it  in  its  form  and  divisions  show 

39 


more  resemblance  to  an  Egyptian  than  to  a  Babylo- 
nian house  of  God? 

Why  the  Emphasis  on  the  Shedding  of  Blood? 

^<^^'  Fourth,  if  the  laws  of  the  Priest-code  were  made 
at  Babylon,  how  does  it  come  about  that  the  main 
emphasis  in  these  laws  is  upon  the  shedding  of  blood 
and  that  the  principal  offerings  are  bloody  offerings ; 
whereas,  in  the  Babylonian  religion  it  is  doubtful 
if  any  reference  is  ever  made  to  the  importance  of 
the  blood  and  no  word  corresponding  to  the  Hebrew 
word  for  altar  (misb'each)  has  ever  yet  been  found 
in  the  Babylonian  language?  How  is  it,  also,  that 
almost  the  entire  vocabulary  bearing  upon  the  cere- 
ttionial  observances  is  different  in  Babylonian  from 
what  it  is  in  Hebrew?  The  Hebrew  names  for  the 
various  articles  of  clothing  worn  by  the  priests,  for 
the  stones  of  the  breastplate,  for  the  sacrifices,  for 
the  altar  and  the  many  spoons  and  other  implements 
used  in  its  service,  for  the  festivals,  for  the  ark  and 
the  multifarious  articles  used  in  its  construction,  for 
sins  and  removal  of  sins,  and  for  nearly  all  the 
gracious  acts  of  God  in  redemption,  differ  almost 
altogether  from  the  Babylonian.  How  account  for 
all  this,  if  the  ceremonies  of  the  second  temple  were 
first  conceived  by  the  rivers  of  Babylon  under  the 
shadow  of  the  tower  of  Bel? 

Ezra's  Careful  Camouflage! 

^        Fifth,  if  the  ceremonial  law  were  written  between 
500  and  300  B.  C,  at  a  time  when  the  Persian  power 

40 


was  supreme,  how  account  for  the  entire  absence  of 
Persian  words  and  customs  from  the  priestly  docu- 
ment? Why  should  Ezra  and  his  contemporaries 
have  used  so  many  Persian  words  in  their  other 
compositions  and  have  utterly  eschewed  them  in  the 
lengthiest  of  their  works?  Not  one  Persian  word, 
forsooth!  How  careful  they  must  have  been  in 
this  endeavor  to  camouflage  their  attempt  to  foist 
their  work  on  Moses !  They  should  have  spent  more 
of  their  time  and  energy  on  the  removal  of  alleged 
incongruities  in  the  subject  matter. 

Sixth,  if  the  Israelitish  religion  is  a  natural  de- 
velopment like  that  of  the  nations  that  surrounded 
them,  how  does  it  happen  that  the  Phenicians  who 
spoke  substantially  the  same  language  have  an  al- 
most entirely  different  nomenclature  for  their  cere- 
monial acts,  for  sacrifices  and  the  material  of 
sacrifice ;  and  that  the  Phenicians  and  Carthaginians 
and  their  colonies  remained  polytheistic  to  the  last? 

Seventh,  if  the  ceremonial  law  were  written  after 
the  exile,  when  all  the  Jews,  from  Elephantine  in 
Egypt  on  the  west  to  Babylon  on  the  east,  were 
speaking  and  writing  Aramaic,  how  did  it  come  to 
pass  that  the  law  was  written  in  a  Hebrew  so  differ- 
ent from  anything  found  in  any  Aramaic  dialect  that 
almost  every  word  used  in  it  required  to  be  trans- 
lated in  order  to  make  it  understood  by  the  Aramaic- 
speaking  Jews?  Are  we  to  suppose  that  the  exiled 
Hebrews  invented  their  religious  vocabulary  arbi- 
trarily after  their  language  had  ceased  to  be  spoken 
by  any  great  body  of  living  men?  Are  we  to  sup- 
pose that  they  invented,  or  borrowed,  the  names  of 

41 


the  stones  of  the  breastplate,  and  then  forgot  so 
completely  their  Aramaic  equivalents  that  scarcely 
any  two  of  the  four  Aramaic  targums,  or  versions, 
should  afterwards  be  able  to  agree  as  to  the  meaning 
in  Aramaic  of  more  than  two  or  three  of  them  at 
most?  Why,  also,  should  the  articles  of  dress,  the 
names  of  the  sacrifices,  the  materials  of  the  taber- 
nacle, the  verbs  to  denote  the  ceremonial  acts,  and 
in  fact  the  general  coloring  and  the  particular  shades 
of  the  coloring  of  the  whole  fabric  be  so  different? 
Eighth,  how  is  the  fact  to  be  explained  that  the 
Aramaic  of  the  Targum  and  Talmud  has  taken  over 
so  many  roots  and  vocables  from  the  Hebrew  of  the 
Old  Testament?  For  a  comparison  of  the  Old 
Testament  Hebrew  with  the  Aramaic  of  the  Tar- 
gums and  of  both  these  with  the  Syriac  shows  that 
about  six  hundred  roots  and  words  found  in  the 
two  former  do  not  appear  in  Syriac,  nor  in  any  other 
Aramaic  dialect  not  written  by  Jews.  The  critics 
are  in  the  habit  of  charging  that  such  words  are 
Aramaisms  in  Hebrew ;  but  it  is  manifest  that,  while 
it  is  possible  for  the  Jews  who  wrote  Aramaic  two 
hundred  years  after  Christ  to  have  taken  over  He- 
brew words  from  the  Old  Testament  into  their 
translations  and  commentaries,  it  would  have  been 
impossible  for  Hebrew  authors  living  from  two  hun- 
dred to  five  hundred  years  before  Christ  to  have 
taken  over  into  their  vocabulary  Aramaic  words  not 
in  use  till  A.  D.  200,  or  later.  All  of  the  "Introduc- 
tions" to  the  Old  Testament  need  to  be  revised  along 
this  line. 

42 


"To  the  Text  and  to  the  Testimony  !'* 

That  a  word  occurs  in  the  Old  Testament  but 
once  and  then  reappears  five  hundred  or  a  thousand 
years  later  in  an  Aramaic  document  written  by  Jews 
is  to  be  expected.  To  say  that  such  a  word  may 
have  been  in  the  spoken  Aramaic  before  ever  the 
Hebrew  document  was  written,  but  that  it  did  not 
appear  in  writing  till  A.  D.  200,  may  be  met  by 
affirming  that  it  may  have  existed  in  the  spoken 
Hebrew  for  a  thousand  years  before  it  was  written. 
When  we  once  attempt  to  argue  on  the  basis  of 
what  is  not  contained  in  documents,  one  man's  con- 
jecture is  just  about  as  good  as  another's.  I  am 
willing  to  leave  all  such  cases  to  the  written  testi- 
mony found  in  the  documents  we  possess,  and  I 
demand  that  the  assailants  of  the  Scriptures  confine 
themselves  in  like  manner  to  that  which  has  been 
written.  To  the  text  and  to  the  testimony!  By 
these  let  us  stand  or  fall. 

Why  Do  the  Critics  Reject  Chronicles? 

Leaving  the  consideration  of  the  Law  of  Moses, 
I  pass  on  next  to  the  regulations  which  David  is 
said  to  have  formulated  for  the  guidance  of  the 
priests  in  the  service  of  the  sanctuary  and  especially 
for  the  musical  accompaniments  of  worship.  It  will 
be  necessary  in  the  course  of  this  discussion  to  ex- 
amine the  reasons  why  the  critics  reject  the  histori- 
cal character  of  the  books  of  Chronicles  which  refer 
so  often  to  the  music  of  the  first  temple. -°    Since  the 

***  For  a  further  discussion  of  Chronicles^  see  article  referred  to 
in  Note   19. 

43 


Qironicler  refers  only  to  regulations  made  by  David 
for  the  divisions  of  the  priests  and  of  singers,  and 
the  like,  it  is  to  be  presumed  that  regulations  with 
regard  to  other  matters  connected  with  the  service 
were  already  in  use. 

That  a  temple  was  actually  built  by  David  and 
Solomon  on  Mount  Zion  at  Jerusalem  no  man  surely 
would  deny.  The  whole  after  history  of  both  Israel 
and  Judah  turns  upon  that  fact.  The  analogy  of  all 
other  ancient  nations  and  the  whole  literature  of  the 
Israelites  proves  beyond  question  that  such  a  temple 
must  have  been  constructed. 

Now,  when  this  temple  was  first  built,  all  that 
would  be  necessary  would  be  to  take  over  the  priests 
and  the  ritual  already  in  existence  and  vary  them 
only  in  so  far  as  was  required  to  meet  the  new 
conditions  of  an  enlarged  and  more  dignified  place 
of  worship.  The  old  priesthood  of  the  temple  at 
Shiloh  and  the  old  laws  of  the  tabernacle  with  refer- 
ence to  sacrifices  and  festivals  would  be  found  suffi- 
cient ;  but  to  make  the  service  more  efficient  and 
suitable  to  the  great  glory  of  the  magnificent  house 
that  had  been  erected  for  the  God  of  Israel,  certain 
new  regulations  as  to  the  time  and  manner  of  the 
services  were  instituted  by  David.  Whatever  is  not 
referred  to  as  having  originated  with  him  must  be 
presumed  to  have  been  already  in  existence. 

Since  David  and  Solomon  built  the  temple,  it  is 
common  sense  to  suppose  that  they  organized  the 
priests  into  regular  orders  for  the  orderly  service  of 
the  sanctuary.  These  priests  had  already  had  their 
clothing  prescribed  by  Moses  after  the  analogy  of 

44 


the  Egyptian  and  all  other  orders  of  priesthood  the 
world  over.  He  also  had  prescribed  the  kinds  and 
times  of  offerings  and  the  purpose  for  which  they 
were  offered.  The  Israelites,  also,  like  the  Egyp- 
tians and  Babylonians,  had  for  their  festive  occa- 
sions such  regulations  as  are  attributed  to  David 
for  the  observance  of  these  festivals,  so  as  to  avoid 
confusion  and  to  preserve  decency  in  the  house  of 
God. 

An  Inconsistent  Theory  Made  to  Fit 

Is  it  to  be  supposed  that  on  these  festive  occa- 
sions no  music  was  to  be  employed  and  no  hymns 
of  praise  to  God  to  be  sung?  Even  the  most  savage 
tribes  have  music  at  their  festivals  and  we  know 
that  the  ancient  Egyptians  had  numerous  hymns  to 
Amon  and  other  gods,  and  that  the  Assyrians  and 
Babylonians,  and  even  the  Sumerians  before  them, 
delighted  in  singing  psalms  of  praise  and  penitence 
as  a  part  of  their  ritual  of  worship.  These  hymns 
in  all  cases  were  accompanied  by  instrumental  music. 
Some  of  the  Babylonian  and  Egyptian  hymns  were 
current  in  writing  for  hundreds,  or  even  thousands, 
of  years  before  the  time  of  Solomon;  and  some 
musical  instruments  had  existed  for  the  same  length 
of  time.  Are  we  to  suppose  that  the  Hebrews  alone 
among  the  nations  of  antiquity  had  no  vocal  and 
instrumental  music  in  their  temple  services?  The 
critics  maintain  that  poetry  is  the  earliest  form  of 
expression  of  a  people's  thoughts  and  history.  Many 
of  them  assert  that  the  song  of  Deborah  antedates 
all  other  literary  productions  in  the  Bible.    Most  of 

45 


them  will  admit  that  David  composed  the  lament 
over  Saul  and  Jonathan. 

But  they  draw  the  line  at  his  Psalms  of  praise 
and  penitence.  Why  ?  Because  it  suits  their  theory 
that  the  Psalms  were  prepared  for  use  in  the  second 
temple.  They  hold  at  the  same  time  that  certain 
poems,  like  the  songs  of  Deborah  and  Miriam  and 
the  blessings  of  Jacob  and  Moses,  antedate  by  cen- 
turies the  historical  narratives  in  which  they  are 
found,  but  that  the  Psalms  were  all,  or  nearly  all, 
composed  after  the  captivity.  What  grounds  have 
they  for  holding  such  seemingly  inconsistent 
theories?  Absolutely  none  that  is  based  on  any 
evidence,  unless  the  wish  to  have  it  so,  in  order  to 
bolster  up  their  conception  of  the  history  of  Israel's 
religion,  be  called  evidence.  We  all  know  into  what 
condition  the  German  conception  that  the  "will  to 
power"  is  the  same  as  the  power  itself  has  brought 
the  world  to-day.  Let  us  remember  that  it  is  the 
German  conception  that  the  will  to  have  the  text  of 
the  Old  Testament  what  they  want  to  have  it  is 
considered  by  them  to  be  the  same  as  having  the 
text  the  same  as  they  will  it  to  be.  The  "willing" 
the  power  has  destroyed  what  power  there  really 
was;  the  "willing"  the  text  has  destroyed  the  text 
itself. 

Psalm    Writers    Would    Not    Have    Absurdly 

Attributed  Their  Work  to  Pre-Captivity 

Authors 

\      Of  course,  it  is  obvious  that  music  is  mentioned 
in  the  books  of  Kings ;  but  it  is  made  prominent  in 

46 


Chronicles,  and  the  headings  of  many  of  the  Psalms 
attribute  them  to  David  and  in  three  cases  to  Moses 
and  Solomon.  It  is  hardly  to  be  supposed  that  the 
writer  would  have  made  his  work  absurd  by  making 
statements  that  his  contemporaries  would  have 
known  to  be  untrue.  Whether  the  headings  are  all 
trustworthy,  or  not,  it  is  absurd  to  suppose  that  the 
writers  of  them  would  have  attributed  so  many  of 
the  Psalms  to  pre-captivity  authors,  when  their  con- 
temporaries must  have  known  that  the  whole  body 
of  Psalms  had  arisen  after  the  fall  of  the  first 
temple,  had  such  been  actually  the  case.  The  most 
natural  supposition  would  be  that  David  either  made 
or  collected  a  sufficient  number  of  Psalms  to  meet 
the  requirements  of  the  temple  worship. 

Common  sense  and  universal  analogy  compel  us 
to  believe,  also,  that  an  orderly  worship  conducted 
by  priests  in  accordance  with  prescribed  regulations 
and  a  service  of  song  commensurate  with  the  dignity 
and  decency  becoming  the  house  of  God  must  have 
existed  among  the  Hebrews,  certainly  from  the  time 
that  the  first  temple  was  constructed  and  probably 
from  the  time  that  the  tabernacle  was  erected  and 
the  annual  festivals  established.  Historians  of 
royal  courts,  of  diplomacy  and  war,  like  the  author 
of  the  books  of  Kings,  may  not  mention  such  things ; 
but  we  may  be  sure  that  they  existed.  The  temple 
itself  proves  this.  Universal  experience  proves  it. 
The  weeping  stone  at  the  foundation  of  the  temple, 
where  the  Jews  of  to-day  congregate  to  bewail  the 
long  departed  glories  of  Mount  Zion  and  the  glori- 
ous house  of  Israel's  God,  testifies  that  the  tradi- 

47 


tions  about  the  sweet  Psalmist  of  Israel  were  riot 
all  figments  of  the  imagination,  nor  mythical  crea- 
tions of  later  times. 

Besides,  why  should  the  critics  treat  the  books  of 
Chronicles  as  if  their  statements,  additional  to  those 
in  Kings,  were  not  to  be  credited?  They  assert 
that  the  genealogical  list  in  1  Chronicles  3:17-24 
would  bring  down  the  date  of  the  composition  of 
Chronicles  to  about  300  B.  C,  and  that  we  cannot 
rely  upon  the  statements  of  a  work  written  so  long 
after  the  events  recorded.  But,  at  the  same  time, 
they  all  agree  that  the  text  of  this  passage  has  not 
been  correctly  transmitted  and  that  its  interpreta- 
tion admits  of  the  sixth  generation  after  Zerubbabel 
as  the  period  of  its  composition.  As  the  word  son 
in  all  such  genealogies  means  successor,  whether  it 
be  a  real  son,  an  adopted  son,  or  an  official  suc- 
cessor, it  is  fair,  judging  by  the  analogy  of  other 
similar  lists,  to  suppose  that  from  fifteen  to  twenty 
years  would  be  amply  sufficient  for  each  generation 
of  priests,  or  kings.  Since  Zerubbabel  lived  about 
520  B.C.,  such  a  calculation  would  bring  the  date 
of  Chronicles  to  about  400  B.  C. 

The  "Jaddua"  of  Chronicles  and  of  Josephus  Not 
Necessarily  the  Same 

,  That  the  mention  of  Jaddua  as  high  priest  ren- 
^ders  this  date  impossible,  cannot  be  maintained  for 
the  following  reasons :  First,  it  is  supposed  that  the 
Jaddua  mentioned  in  Nehemiah  12:11,22  is  the 
same  as  the  Jaddua  mentioned  by  Josephus  as  hav- 
ing been  high  priest  when  Alexander  came  up  to 

48 


Jerusalem  in  336  B.  C.  But  the  critics  themselves 
assert  that  this  account  of  Alexander's  visit  is  utterly 
unreliable.  Why  then  should  they  consider  the 
name  and  the  time  of  the  high  priesthood  of  Jaddua 
to  be  the  only  valid  date  of  the  account  given  by 
Josephus  and  that  they  alone  are  reliable  enough 
to  overthrow  the  accepted  date  of  Chronicles? 
y  Besides,  there  may  have  been  two  high  priests  of 
the  name  of  Jaddua,  just  as,  between  300  and  100 
B.  C,  there  were  two  or  three  of  the  name  of  Simon 
and  six  of  the  name  of  Onias.  Or  the  same  Jaddua 
may  have  been  high  priest  at  400  B.  C.  and  also  in 
336  B.  C.  Josephus  says  he  was  very  old,  and  men 
in  such  positions  not  infrequently  reach  ninety,  or 
more,  years  of  age.  I,  myself,  had  a  great-grand- 
father and  a  great-uncle  who  lived  to  be  over  a 
hundred,  a  great-grandmother  who  was  ninety-nine, 
one  great-uncle  ninety-four,  another  ninety-two. 
Besides,  my  mother  died  at  eighty,  and  half  a  dozen 
uncles  and  aunts  between  eighty  and  ninety  years 
of  age.  Every  one  of  these  was  old  enough  and 
active  enough  to  have  been  high  priest  for  sixty- 
five  years,  and  several  of  them  for  eighty  years,  had 
they  lived  in  the  times  of  the  Chronicles,  and  been 
eligible  to  the  office. 

Ewald  Utterly  Refuted  in  the  Argument  Regard- 
ing the  Title  "King  of  Persia" 

Second,  the  critics  affirm  that  Ezra,  Nehemiah, 
and  Chronicles  were  put  together  in  their  present 
form  by  the  same  redactor  and  that  this  redactor 
must  have  lived  in  the  Greek  period,  because  he 

49 


calls  the  kings  of  Persia  by  the  title  "king  of  Persia." 
The  great  German  critic,  Ewald,  said  it  was  "un- 
necessary and  contrary  to  contemporary  usage"  to 
call  the  kings  of  Persia  by  the  title  "king  of  Persia" 
during  the  time  that  the  kings  of  Persia  actually 
ruled;  and  that  consequently  the  presence  of  this 
title  in  a  document  shows  that  the  document  must 
have  been  written  after  the  Persian  empire  had 
ceased  to  exist.  The  present  writer  has  shown  by 
a  complete  induction  of  all  the  titles  of  the  kings  of 
Egypt,  Babylon,  Assyria,  Greece,  and  all  the  other 
nations  of  that  part  of  the  world  including  the 
Hebrews  themselves,  from  4000  B.  C.  down  to  Au- 
gustus, that  it  was  the  custom  in  all  times,  languages, 
and  kingdoms  to  use  titles  similar  to  this.^^  Further, 
he  has  shown  that  the  title  "king  of  Persia"  was 
given  by  Nabunaid,  king  of  Babylon,  to  Cyrus  in 
546  B.  C,  seven  years  before  the  first  use  of  it  in 
the  Bible,  and  that  it  is  used  by  Xenophon  in  365 
B.  C.,  probably  forty  years  after  it  is  used  for  the 
last  time  in  the  Bible.  Further,  he  has  shown  that, 
between  546  and  365  B.  C.,  it  was  used  thirty-eight 
different  times  by  eighteen  different  authors,  in 
nineteen  different  documents,  in  six  different  lan- 
guages, and  in  five  or  six  different  countries;  and 
that  it  is  used  in  letters  and  dates  in  Scripture  just 
as  it  is  used  in  the  extra-Biblical  documents.  Lastly, 
he  has  shown  that  it  was  not  usual  for  the  Greek 
authors  after  the  Persian  period  to  employ  the  title.^^ 

=»  See  articles  by  R.  D.  Wilson  on  "The  Titles  of  Kings  in 
Ancient  Times,"  in  The  Princeton   Theological  Review  for   1905-6. 

^  See  article  by  R.  D.  Wilson  in  the  Festschrift  Edouard  Sachau, 
Berlin,  1911. 

50 


Inexcusable  Ignorance  of  Evidence  on  the  Part 
of  Notable  Critics  Exposed 

Thus,  with  regard  to  this  title,  by  a  mass  of  in- 
contestable evidence,  the  writers  of  Chronicles  and 
Ezra,  and  of  Daniel,  also,  are  shown  to  be  in  har- 
mony with  the  contemporaneous  usage  of  documents 
written  in  the  Persian  period  and  to  be  out  of  har- 
mony with  the  common  usage  in  Greek  times.  The 
Bible  is  right,  and  Professor  Ewald  of  Gottingen, 
the  greatest  German  Old  Testament  scholar  of  his 
time,  and  Professors  Driver  and  Gray  of  Oxford, 
the  writers  of  many  books  and  of  many  articles  in 
the  Encyclopedia  Britannica,  Hastings,  and  the  Ex- 
pository Times,  are  proved  to  be  wrong.  They  all 
might  have  read  that  part  of  the  evidence  which  is 
found  in  Herodotus,  Thucydides,  Aeschylus,  Xeno- 
phon,  and  other  Greek  authors.  Drs.  Driver  and 
Gray  ought,  also,  to  have  read  for  themselves,  or  to 
have  had  Professor  Sayce,  or  Dr.  King,  or  Dr. 
Budge,  read  or  gather  for  them  the  evidence  on  the 
subject  to  be  found  in  the  Babylonian,  Persian, 
Susian,  and  Egyptian.  Unless  one  has  sufficiently 
mastered  the  languages  in  which  the  texts  contain- 
ing the  evidence  on  such  subjects  as  the  titles  of  the 
kings  of  Persia  are  written,  he  cannot  be  called  an 
expert  witness  and  should  be  ruled  out  of  court. 

Having  read  carefully  and  repeatedly  what  these 
critics  have  to  say  on  this  title,  I  have  failed  to  find 
any  hint  indicating  that  they  have  ever  appealed 
for  their  information  to  any  original  sources  outside 
of  Greek,  Hebrew,  and  Aramaic;  and  as  to  these, 

51 


they  pay  no  attention  to  the  great  Greek  writers 
mentioned  above.  If  they  are  so  careless  and  unre- 
liable where  their  assertions  can  be  investigated, 
what  ground  have  they  for  expecting  us  to  rely  upon 
them  where  their  assertions  cannot  be  tested?  If 
the  statements  of  the  Biblical  writers  are  found  to 
be  confirmed  when  they  can  be  tested  by  outside 
evidence,  is  it  not  right  to  presume  that  they  are 
correct  when  no  evidence  for,  or  against,  their  state- 
ments is  within  our  knowledge? 

Variations  in  Numbers  Will  be  Better  Under- 
stood When  Israel's  Numerical  Signs 
Are  Discovered 

The  other  objections  to  the  trustworthiness  of  the 
records  of  Chronicles  are  mostly  purely  subjective 
in  character,  utterly  devoid  of  any  objective  evidence 
in  their  favor;  or  they  are  based  upon  interpreta- 
tions which  are  impossible  to  prove.  Are  we  driven 
to  conclude,  for  example,  that  a  thousand  of  thou- 
sands means  exactly  one  million,  neither  more  nor 
less?  May  it  not  mean  many,  or  countless,  thou- 
sands, just  as  a  generation  of  generations  means 
many  generations?  And  are  the  critics  who  find 
the  account  that  the  Chronicler  gives  of  the  con- 
spiracy against  Athaliah  inconsistent  with  that  given 
in  Kings  quite  sure  that  the  captain  and  the  guard 
of  Kings  cannot  have  been  priests  and  Levites? 
Besides,  how  can  we  expect  to  explain  satisfactorily 
all  apparent  incongruities  in  documents  that  are 
thousands  of  years  old? 

As  to  the  variations  in  numbers  in  the  different 

52 


sources,  they  are  probably  due  to  different  readings 
of  the  original  signs.  But  we  do  not  know  what 
signs  the  Hebrews  used ;  and  so  we  cannot  at  present 
discuss  intelligently  the  reasons  for  the  variations, 
and  never  shall  until  the  system  of  numerical  signs 
used  by  the  Israelites  has  been  discovered.  And 
everybody  knows  how  difficult  it  is  to  copy  numeri- 
cal signs  correctly.  There  is  nothing  usually  in  the 
context  to  help  us  to  determine  just  how  many  men 
were  in  an  army,  or  how  many  were  killed  in  a 
given  battle.  The  important  thing  is,  who  won  the 
fight. 

I  once  inquired  what  was  the  population  of  a 
certain  Southern  city.  One  told  me  40,000;  an- 
other, 120,000.  When  I  asked  for  an  explanation 
of  the  discrepancy,  I  was  told  that  there  were  40,000 
whites  and  80,000  Negroes.  Both  estimates  were 
true ;  but  had  they  been  written  down  in  two  differ- 
ent documents  what  charges  of  inconsistency  might 
not  have  been  made  by  future  scientific  historians! 

The  Chronicler  Need  Not  Have  Copied 
From  Kings 

Again,  in  their  criticism  of  Chronicles,  the  critics 
proceed  on  the  presumption  that,  in  the  portions  that 
are  parallel  to  Kings,  the  author  has  merely  copied 
from  Kings,  and  that  he  has  no  further  sources  of 
reliable  information.  The  author  of  Chronicles  him- 
self states  that  he  had  a  number  of  such  sources. 
Can  the  critics  give  any  good  reason  to  show  that 
he  did  not  have  these  sources?  Why,  since  the 
Chronicles  of  the  kings  of  Israel  were  not  destroyed 

S3 


by  Sargon  when  Samaria  was  overthrown,  and 
Hosea,  Amos,  the  so-called  Jehovist  and  Elohistic 
parts  of  the  Pentateuch,  Deuteronomy,  and  other 
works  of  the  Hebrews  were  not  destroyed  at  the 
time  of  the  destruction  of  Jerusalem  by  Nebuchad- 
nezzar, should  we  suppose  that  the  records  of  the 
kings  of  Israel  and  Judah  were  not  in  existence 
when  the  writers  of  Kings  and  Chronicles  composed 
their  works  ? 

And  why,  since  so  many  hundreds  of  works 
of  the  ancient  Greeks,  such  as  those  mentioned 
by  Pliny/*  have  since  utterly  disappeared,  are  we 
to  suppose  that  the  Jews  of  Ezra's  time  did  not 
also  possess  many  works  that  have  long  since  been 
obliterated?  The  Aramaic  recension  of  the  Behistun 
Inscription  of  Darius  Hystaspis  and  the  Aramaic 
work  of  Ahikar  were  buried  at  Elephantine  for 
twenty-three  hundred  years,  but  have  now  been  un- 
earthed and  show  that  the  Aramaic-speaking  Jews 
of  the  sixth  and  fifth  centuries  B.  C»  had  produced 
some  literary  documents  at  least  in  addition  to  the 
Aramaic  portions  of  Ezra  and  Daniel.^*  How  many 
more  of  such  works  may  have  been  possessed  by 
them  both  in  Hebrew  and  Aramaic  we  cannot  say, 
but  the  probability  is  that  they  were  numerous.  We 
cannot  see  that  there  is  sufficient  reason  for  doubt- 
ing the  claim  of  the  Chronicler  to  have  had  access 
to  sources  extending  from  the  time  of  David  down 
to  his  own  time.  He  says  that  he  did  have  such 
sources.    How  can  the  critics  know  that  he  did  not? 


^Natural  History,   Book  I. 
**  See  Sachau,  Papyrus. 


54 


One  of  the  most  unjustifiable  of  the  assaults  upon 
the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  lies  in  the  assumption 
that  the  larger  part  of  the  great  poetical  and  legal 
productions  and  some  of  the  finest  prophecies  were 
produced  during  the  period  of  her  political  and  lin- 
guistic decay,  which  followed  the  year  500  B.  C.  The 
only  time  after  the  end  of  the  captivity  at  which  we 
might  naturally  have  expected  a  recrudescence  of 
such  literary  activity  was  the  period  from  200  B.  C. 
to  the  time  of  Pompey.  And  here  in  fact  are  to  be 
placed  the  apocryphal  and  pseudepigraphical  works 
of  Ecclesiasticus,  Wisdom,  First  Maccabees,  Jubi- 
lees, parts  of  Enoch,  and  many  other  works  of 
greater  or  less  value.^^ 

The  only  one  of  these  that  has  been  preserved  in 
Hebrew  is  Ecclesiasticus;  and  its  Hebrew  has  no 
word  that  is  certainly  Greek,  and  not  one  of  Persian 
origin  that  is  not  found  in  the  Old  Testament.^^ 

Many  traces  of  Persian  influence  are  visible  in 
Chronicles,  Esther,  Ezra,  and  Nehemiah.^^  When, 
however,  we  come  to  the  Hebrew  of  the  Psalms, 
of  which  so  many  are  placed  by  the  critics  in  this 
period,  of  Ecclesiastes,  and  of  the  Hebrew  part  of 
Daniel,  we  find  that  the  language  differs  markedly 
from  Ecclesiasticus  both  in  vocabulary  and  forms. 

The  use  of  the  conjunction  "and"  with  the  per- 
fect, which  is  said  to  be  a  mark  of  the  lateness  of 
Ecclesiastes,   is  not   found  in   Ecclesiasticus.     Ec- 

"  See  Apocrypha  and  Pseudipigrapha  of  the  Old  Testament,  by 
R.  H.  Charles. 

'*  See  Strack's  and  Smend's  editions. 

*''  See  Driver,  Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, in  lee. 

55 


clesiastes  is  devoid  of  any  words  that  are  certainly 
Babylonian,  Persian,  or  Aramaic.  The  so-called 
Maccabean  Psalms  have  no  Persian  or  Greek  words 
and  few  if  any  that  are  certainly  Babylonian;  and 
only  a  few  that  are  even  alleged  to  have  Aramaic 
vocables  or  forms. 

The  period  between  500  and  164  B.  C.  was  one 
in  which  the  Israelites  were  subservient  to  the  gov- 
ernment of  Persia  and  the  Greeks.  The  only  re- 
liable information  from  this  time  about  a  revival 
of  national  feeling  and  semi-independence  among 
the  Jews  is  that  to  be  found  in  Ezra-Nehemiah  and 
a  few  hints  in  Ecclesiasticus  and  Tobit.  And  the 
only  literary  works  in  Hebrew  that  were  certainly 
written  during  this  period  of  decay  are  the  books 
of  Esther,  Ezra,  Nehemiah,  and  Chronicles.  As  we 
would  expect,  they  are  all  characterized  by  Persian, 
Babylonian,  and  Aramaic  words,  and  Ezra  is  nearly 
half  composed  in  Aramaic. 

Prophecies  That  Contain  No  Persian  or 
Greek  Word 

But  how  about  Jonah,  Joel,  Isaiah  24-27,  the 
Priest  Codex,  the  Song  of  Songs,  and  the  multitude 
of  Psalms,  which  the  critics  arbitrarily  place  in  this 
period?  There  is  not  in  them  one  certainly  Persian 
word,  nor  a  single  Greek  word.  Not  a  Babylonian 
word,  not  already  found  in  the  earlier  literature, 
appears  in  any  one  of  them,  and  scarcely  a  word 
that  the  critics  even  can  allege  to  be  an  Aramaism. 
In  language,  style,  and  thought,  no  greater  contrast 
can  be  found  in  the  whole  literature  of  the  Old 

56 


Testament  than  there  is  hetween  the  books  that 
purport  to  have  been  written  and  those  which  the 
critics  allege  to  have  been  written  in  this  period. 
•  ^  It  is  to  be  hoped  that  the  reader  appreciates  the 
value  and  the  bearing  of  these  facts.  The  Higher 
Criticism,  as  Dr.  Driver  affirms  in  the  Preface  to 
his  "Introduction  to  the  Literature  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment/* is  based  upon  *'a  comparative  study  of  the 
writings."  No  one  will  object  to  this  method  of 
investigation.  Only,  let  us  abide  by  the  results.  Let 
us  not  bring  in  our  subjective  views  and  make  them 
outweigh  the  obvious  facts. 

Nothing  in  1800  Years  of  History  to  Invalidate 
the  Old  Testament 

Last  of  all,  we  must  cast  a  glance  at  the  history 
of  the  religion  of  Israel.  It  must  be  admitted  that, 
before  we  can  attempt  such  a  history,  we  must  de- 
termine two  great  facts :  first,  the  dates  of  the  docu- 
ments on  which  the  history  is  based ;  and,  secondly, 
the  attitude  we  are  going  to  take  with  regard  to 
miracle  and  prophecy.  As  to  the  first  of  these  facts, 
I  have  already  given  a  number  of  the  reasons  for 
holding  that  there  is  no  sufficient  ground  for  believ- 
ing that  the  Pentateuch  did  not  originate  with  Moses, 
or  that  David  did  not  write  many  of  the  Psalms ; 
and  that  there  is  every  reason  in  language  and  his- 
tory for  supposing  that  all  but  a  few  of  the  books 
were  written  before  500  B.  C.  I  have  not  attempted 
to  fix  the  exact  dates  of  composition,  or  final  redac- 
tion, of  the  books  composed  before  that  time,  pre- 
ferring rather  to  show  that  there  is  nothing  in  the 

57 


history  of  the  world  from  2000  to  164  B.  C.  that 
militates  against  the  possibility,  nor  even  against  the 
probability,  of  the  trustworthiness  of  the  history  of 
Israel  as  recorded  in  the  Old  Testament.  Nor,  in 
spite  of  some  apparent  inconsistencies  and  of  many 
passages  difficult  to  explain  satisfactorily,  owing  to 
our  ignorance  of  all  the  facts,  is  there  anything  in 
the  history  of  Israel  as  recorded  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment that  makes  it  appear  incredible  or  unveracious. 
No  one  knows  enough  to  affirm  with  confidence  that 
any  one  of  the  prophetic  books  was  not  written  by 
the  man  whose  name  it  bears.  No  one  knows  enough 
to  assert  that  the  kings  and  others  mentioned  did 
not  do  and  say  what  is  ascribed  to  them. 

If,  then,  we  can  accept  the  documents  of  the  Old 
Testament  as  substantially  correct,  we  come  to  the 
further  question  of  whether  the  presentment  of  the 
Israelitish  religion,  as  we  find  it  described  in  the 
Old  Testament,  is  true.  But  there  is  no  use  of 
discussing  this  subject  until  at  least  the  possibility 
of  God's  making  known  his  will  to  man  is  admitted. 
Whoever  admits  this  possibility  is  in  a  fair  way  to 
become  a  Christian.  So  long  as  one  denies  this,  he 
cannot  possibly  become  a  Christian  nor  even  a  The- 
ist.  For  those  who  believe  in  the  resurrection  of 
Jesus  and  what  it  implies  as  to  the  person  and  work 
of  the  Son  of  God  and  of  his  apostles  under  the 
guidance  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  question  of  the 
history  of  the  religion  of  Israel  assumes  an  entirely 
different  character  and  purpose.  It  becomes  part 
of  the  plan  of  God  for  the  world's  redemption. 
They  who  accept  the  statements  of  the  New  Testa- 

58 


ment  writers  and  of  the  Lord  as  true  will  accept 
what  they  say  about  the  Old  Testament  as  true  until 
it  is  proved  to  be  false.  And  when  the  Old  Testa- 
ment is  shown  not  to  agree  with  what  Christ  and 
the  apostles  say,  it  will  be  presumed  that  the  text 
has  not  been  rightly  transmitted  or  correctly 
interpreted. 

The  Plan,  Purpose,  and  People  of  the  History  of 

Redemption  Offer  a  Reasonable  Basis 

for  Belief 

The  attitude  of  one  who  believes  that  God  spake 
to  man  through  the  prophets  to  whom  he  gave  a 
message  for  his  people  is  also  fundamentally  differ- 
ent from  that  of  one  who  disbelieves  this  hundred- 
times  repeated  statement  of  the  Old  Testament.  A 
believer  in  Theism  can  accept  the  statements  of  the 
Old  Testament  books,  especially  in  the  light  of  the 
New,  as  being  what  they  appear  on  the  face  of  them 
to  be.  If  any  statements  of  the  Old  Testament  are 
proved  to  be  false,  he  lays  the  blame  to  a  corruption 
of  the  text  or  to  a  wrong  interpretation  of  the  evi- 
dence. For  he  is  convinced  that  the  Bible  contains 
the  revelation  of  the  divine  plan  for  the  redemption 
of  humanity  from  sin  unto  holiness  and  everlasting 
life.  All  that  he  wants,  or  needs,  to  have  estab- 
lished, is  that  this  plan  has  been  handed  down  to  us 
in  a  sufficiently  reliable  form  to  insure  the  purpose 
of  the  divine  author.  The  reasonable  Christian  can 
rejoice  and  believe  that  the  Bible  has  thus  been 
handed  down.  The  plan  is  there  in  the  documents 
of  the  Old  Testament  and  of  the  New,  as  clear  as 

59 


day.  The  purpose  is  there.  The  Jewish  people  ex- 
isted and  exists,  according  to  the  Scripture,  as  an 
ever-present  evidence  that  the  plan  and  the  purpose 
were  of  God. 

The  Christian  church  in  like  manner  exists  as  an 
evidence  that  the  Gospel  of  salvation  was  really 
meant  for  the  whole  world.  This  Gospel  has  met 
and  satisfied  the  need  and  the  hope  of  human  nature 
for  pardon  and  communion  with  God,  and  it  is  meet- 
ing them  to-day.  Millions  exult  in  their  present  faith 
and  die  at  peace  and  in  hope  of  a  blessed  and  an 
everlasting  life.  The  Bible  and  the  church  are  the 
foundation  of  this  faith  and  peace  and  hope.  The 
history  of  Israel  is  continued  in  the  history  of  the 
Christian  church.  He  who  attacks  one  attacks  both. 
United  they  stand ;  divided  they  fall.  Unitedly  they 
present  a  reasonable  foundation  for  the  belief  that 
God  has  never  left  himself  without  a  witness  that 
he  loves  mankind  and  will  have  all  men  to  believe 
and  to  come  to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth.  Looked 
at  in  the  light  of  the  whole  world's  history  from  the 
beginning  until  now,  the  history  of  the  religion  of 
the  Old  Testament  as  given  in  the  books  themselves, 
unrevised  and  fairly  interpreted,  is  rational  and 
worthy  of  trust.  In  this  faith  we  live;  in  this  faith 
let  us  die. 

A   Parallel   Monstrosity   to   the   Denial   of   Old 
Testament  History  Imagined 

Notwithstanding  this  evident  plan  and  purpose  of 
a  divine  redemption  which  runs  all  through  the 
Scriptures,  there  are  to-day  many  professedly  Chris- 

60 


tian  writers  who  treat  of  the  Israelitish  religion  as 
if  it  were  a  purely  natural  development.  They  dili- 
gently pick  out  every  instance  of  a  superstitious 
observance,  or  of  a  departure  from  the  law,  or  of  a 
disobedience  to  the  divine  commands,  as  if  these 
represented  the  true  religion  of  ancient  Israel.  They 
cut  up  the  books  and  doctor  the  documents  and 
change  the  text  and  wrest  the  meaning,  to  suit  the 
perverted  view  of  their  own  fancy.  They  seem  to 
think  that  they  know  better  what  the  Scriptures 
ought  to  have  been  than  the  prophets  and  apostles 
and  even  the  Lord  himself !  They  tell  us  when 
revelations  must  have  been  made,  and  how  and 
where  they  must  have  been  given,  and  what  their 
contents  could  have  been,  as  if  they  knew  more 
about  such  matters  than  God  himself.  Imagine  a 
man's  writing  the  history  of  the  last  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  and  denying  that  the  New  Testament 
had  been  in  existence  during  all  that  time,  denying 
that  the  Christian  church  with  all  its  saving  doc- 
trines and  benevolent  institutions  and  beneficent 
social  system  derived  from  the  New  Testament  had 
been  active  and,  in  a  sense,  triumphant  for  at  least 
fifteen  hundred  years,  simply  because  he  could  select 
thousands  of  examples  of  superstitious  customs,  and 
hellish  deeds,  and  impious  words,  and  avowed  ag- 
nostics, and  heaven-defying  atheists,  that  have  dis- 
graced the  pages  of  history  during  this  time ! 

Grovel  for  Beetles, — or  Pluck  Violets? 

Let  us  not  grovel  for  the  beetles  and  the  earth 
worms  of  almost  forgotten  faiths  which  may  per- 

61 


chance  be  discovered  beneath  the  stones  and  sod  of 
the  Old  Testament,  while  the  violets  and  the  lilies- 
of-the-valley  of  a  sweet  and  lowly  faith  arc  in  bloom 
on  every  page  and  every  oracle  revealed  within  the 
Word  of  God  is  jubilant  with  songs  of  everlasting 
joy.  The  true  religion  of  Israel  came  down  from 
God  arrayed  in  the  beautiful  garments  of  righteous- 
ness and  life.  We  cannot  substitute  for  this  heaven- 
made  apparel  a  robe  of  human  manufacture,  how- 
ever fine  it  be. 


62 


•      -  Due 

ni^^^ — 


Date  Due 

«,  ,, 

r- '    :. 

-■'*■     -*          " ' . 

1 
-.                              1 

fla«l 

'48 

F  4      '4^ 

fACULTt 

- 

fl 

Ml'  L  i-.  -K' 

L:  ri, 

^ 

fl 

,PE1V45 

1 

« 

iv/v  f  Q  -50 

fli 

g^^  __^^ 

w' 

p.-.nii_ 

k 

.^^17  2 

ul 

■ 

<|) 

BS1160.W75 

Is  the  higher  criticism  scholarly? 

Princeton  Theological  Semmary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00011   8028 


